


Natalie Jones and the Stone Knight

by ironychan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-03-25 05:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 125,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13827756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironychan/pseuds/ironychan
Summary: An Alternate Universe: Natasha is undercover as an adventure-seeking archaeologist, Steve is a resurrected medieval knight, and they - along with an ex-military surgeon, a detective, a man who believes he's Nat's father, and a nut who thinks he's Robin Hood - are on a quest for the Holy Grail.  The journey will bring them face to face with sorcerers, goblins, the Queen of England, and the Loch Ness Monster!





	1. The Two Statues

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know this is neither the third installment of 'A Colder War' nor the multiverse fic I've been promising people. I swear those are still coming, but I had writer's block and I thought the way to beat it might be by writing something deliberately silly. I guess it worked. Sort of. Anyway, enjoy.

            On the face of it, it wasn’t a strange request.  Oil and mining companies were constantly poking around in back woods and muddy lake bottoms and other spots nobody ever bothered to go, and they sometimes came upon evidence that such places hadn’t always been as deserted as they were now.  When they did, it made sense for them to call in an archaeologist to tell them what they’d found – an archaeologist like Dr. Natalie Jones from the University of Dundee.  That much was perfectly ordinary.

            There were other aspects of the situation, however, that set Nat’s long-dormant spy senses tingling.  The company representative who’d called her office had been unusually secretive, hinting at ‘unknown Norman art’ rather than describing any particular object.  No photographs had been offered, and rather than meeting her at the site, they’d asked her to come to a warehouse on the edge of Inverness.  It was all very cloak-and-dagger, and as Nat headed North around the edge of Cairngorms, with the cold Scottish rain pelting against her windshield, she thought she had a good idea why.

            They must, she decided, have found gold.  Caches of gold and silver from ages past were not uncommon in the British Isles.  There was the Staffordshire Hoard, a mass of gem-encrusted weapons fittings found in the topsoil of a farmer’s field, or the Wickham Market Hoard, a fortune in gold coins that somebody had buried in the first century and then never come back for.  Such things were far more valuable for what they could teach about the past than they could ever be as mere treasure, but there was a danger that whoever found them wouldn’t be able to see past the pound signs that lit up in their eyes.  If the officials at the Pierce Resources Group didn’t want to tell Nat what they’d found, it was probably because they didn’t want _her_ telling anybody _else_.  If they didn’t want her to look at their find _in situ_ , that meant they were keeping the location a secret.  Whatever it was must be very valuable, and that almost certainly meant gold.

            _That_ , in turn, meant part of Nat’s job would be to convince them to sell it to a museum or university collection for preservation and study, rather than to a private collector who might offer more money.  That would be a difficult task in itself, but fortunately, Nat could be very persuasive.

            The warehouse they’d invited her to was at the end of a rather ominously un-used road a bit south of the Holm Mills Shopping Village, not far from the River Ness.  There was a little area between the buildings where there was a roof over the road, and a group of men were waiting there out of the rain to greet her.  She climbed out of her car, and one of them, a craggy-faced, graying blond in a white turtleneck sweater and a long black coat, stepped forward and offered a hand.

            “Sawney Pierce,” he said.  “You must be Dr. Jones.”

            “That’s me,” she replied, giving his hand a firm shake.

            His eyebrows rose at the sound of her voice.  “You’re an American,” he observed.

            “I was born in New York,” Nat said.  “Where’d you think I was from?”

            “Based on your name I’d assumed southern England or Wales,” Pierce admitted.  “I suppose a lot of people from there live in America.”

            “They do, but my ancestors were actually Russian,” Nat said pleasantly.  “My grandparents immigrated in the forties, but Russian names weren’t a good way to win friends back then.”  The words came out smoothly and naturally.  She’d thought her fake past through very carefully, and had been sure to fabricate the appropriate evidence.  Anyone who looked would find that Nikolai and Olga Romanov had indeed existed, and had filed for a legal name change from _Romanov_ to the unremarkable _Jones_ in 1949.

            “Well, nationality notwithstanding,” Pierce said, “I think you’ll be very interested in what we have to show you today.”  He pointed to the warehouse door behind him, and one of his employees got out a set of keys to open it.

            “I think I will,” Nat agreed.  “I’ve been wondering about it all the way from Dundee.  Is it gold?”

            Pierce laughed.  “No, Dr. Jones,” he said.  “No, it’s not gold.  It’s stone.”

            “Stone?”  Natasha hadn’t expected _that_.  What on earth had he found?  _Stone_ archaeology tended to be a lot bigger and more unwieldy than the gold kind, and correspondingly harder to excavate and transport?  Why had he brought it to this warehouse?  Why didn’t he want to say what it was or where he’d found it.

            “Yes, stone,” said Pierce.  “Basalt, I believe.”  The padlock on the door opened, and the employees pushed the door itself, on its creaking metal tracks, out of the way.  “Come inside.”

            Nat followed him in.  If this turned out to be building fragments, she thought, or something else that should have been studied in context, she was going to break his neck, her cover be damned.

            The inside of the warehouse was well-lit but chilly and drafty, filled with boxes and crates destined for one of PCR’s expeditions in the North Sea.  The place looked like it could easily have the Ark of the Covenant hidden in it somewhere, but when Nat’s eyes caught some of the lables, they turned out to be mostly toiletries – toothpaste, paper towels, or shaving cream.  Mr. Pierce hadn’t brought her here to see _those_.

            “How did you come to be working in Scotland, then?” Pierce asked, leading the way past the rows of supplies.

            “I wish it were an interesting story, but it’s not,” Nat replied with a shrug.  “They had a job opening for an archaeologist specializing in the medieval period, and I applied for it.  That’s really all.”

            “You must have had an impressive CV,” Pierce observed.

            “I guess,” Natasha said, “but I’ve had plenty of time to build one.  Ever since I was little, I always knew what I wanted to be.”

            Unlike most of ‘Natalie Jones’ past, this was _almost_ true.  As children in the Red Room, Natasha and her classmates had watched American movies in order to learn colloquial English, as well as getting an idea of how Americans thought of themselves and their place in the world.  Nat had been captivated by the _Indiana Jones_ films.  She hadn’t missed the intended lessons, that Americans were underhanded imperialists and that a single person in the right place could do enormous damage – but the movies had also made archaeology look so _exciting_.  Dr. Jones travelled the world, encountered magic and mysteries, and never had to kill a single person who hadn’t tried to kill him first.  Though she’d later learned that the reality was, of course, not nearly so romantic, that childhood first impression had played a big part in Nat deciding her cover would be an archaeologist, not to mention her choice of pseudonym.

            “I thought perhaps you were looking for your roots,” Pierce said.  “I mean, Russian ancestors and red hair, you’re clearly a Viking, and the Vikings are where it all began.  The Normans were Vikings, and the Normans brought us our language, our justice system, our navy, our castles… everything that makes Britain _British_ came originally from them,” he said proudly.

            “Well, partially,” said Nat.  “There _is_ a lot of Norman French in English, but Anglo-Saxon was the basis.  Both the Romans and the Abrahamic tradition contributed to medieval law, and then there are the older Celtic cultures it’s all layered on top of…”

            “The Vikings brought it all together,” Pierce insisted, and Natasha decided not to argue the point.  Laypeople rarely appreciated how complex history really was.  Nothing was ever simple where human beings were concerned.  There were always layers, and Nat knew that better than most.

            Pierce and his four companions let the way right to the back of the warehouse, where a set of metal doors could be opened onto a road that came up from the nearby River Ness.  Scrape marks on the floor showed where crates and boxes had been moved aside to make room for what was there now – two irregularly-shaped objects, each a bit over six feet tall and covered with blue tarpaulins.  Natasha’s first instinct was that they had to be statues, but the man on the phone had called them _Norman_.  Neither the Normans nor the Anglo-Saxons had made freestanding stone statues.  They’d preferred stylized reliefs.

            After making sure she was watching, Pierce signalled to his men.  They pulled the tarps away with a theatrical flourish.  Natasha cocked her head and examined what was underneath, then turned to Pierce with a confused frown on her face.

            He was standing tall with his hands in his pockets, smiling.  “So what do you think?” he asked.

            Nat shook her head.  “Who told you they were Norman?” she wanted to know.

            “Well, based on the armor…” he began.

            “No, no,” Nat cut him off.  “These are late eighteenth century at the earliest.”

            “The seafloor sediments were dated to the eleventh century!” Pierce insisted.

            “Then somebody’s laying a joke on you,” said Nat.  “I’m sorry, Mr. Pierce, but these are definitely modern.”

            “What makes you so sure?” he demanded.

            Natasha stepped back to look at the statues.  They were made of black stone – she didn’t see any reason to argue with his identification of basalt – and represented two knights in fighting poses, probably meant to be displayed as if they were fighting each _other_.  Both were over six feet tall, which would have made them giants in the eleventh century.  One was clean-shaven and the other bearded, and both were dressed in long coats of chain mail and helmets with nose guards.  The bearded knight was raising a shield to defend himself, while the shaved one was about to bring a battleaxe down on it.  Their armor and weapons _were_ meant to be eleventh century, but the workmanship and style said otherwise, as did the materials.

            “Well, for one thing,” she said, “nobody was making stone statues like this in the eleventh century.  The style is Roman revival – but they can’t be Renaissance because, as you pointed out, they’ve gone to the trouble of getting the armor right.  Renaissance sculpture would have shown them in either contemporary or Roman armor.  Second, basalt is difficult to carve, especially in this kind of detail.  Nobody had the tools for that back then.  Third, if they’d been underwater for nine hundred years, they’d have marine life growing on them, and fourth, these are mythical figures.  The earliest reference we have to these two men is late medieval.  They’re not on the Bayeux Tapestry, they’re not in William of Poitiers.  They were invented well after the eleventh century.”

            Pierce looked shocked.  He probably would have been even more so if he’d known Natasha’s true background, but just because her credentials were invented didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of living up to them.  Nat had a prodigious memory, enhanced by both medicine and training, and the Red Room had never quite managed to rid her of the urge to show off.

            It took him a moment to find his voice, then he said, “who do you think they are?”

            Natasha pointed to the clean-shaven knight.  “See the skull motif on this one’s helmet?” she asked.  “He’s meant to represent Count John, the Red Death.  He was called _Johann Totenkopf_ in his homeland.  He’s supposed to have been a German ally of William the Conqueror, who turned on him once they reached Dover.”  The face on the statue was of a man in his late forties or early fifties, with sharp cheekbones and a long nose, his lips curled back in a snarl.

            She then turned to the bearded one. His shield was a circular Anglo-Saxon type, with a star painted around the central boss. He looked younger than the other, with a square jaw and classically handsome features – another indication that the statue couldn’t really be very old. “This one is Sir Stephen of Rogsey, who was actually considered a saint until the popes started clearing out the fictional ones in the thirties. His story is that he was a weak and sickly man who wanted to be a knight, so the Lady of the Lake, from the Arthurian legends, gave him a magical shield that made him invincible. He went to help King Harold defend England from the Normans, but him and his army got distracted by the Red Death and chased him north into Scotland, where the two of them died still locked in mortal combat like Holmes and Moriarty going over the waterfall together. That’s the moment depicted here.” She nodded at the pair.

            There was a brief silence, punctuated only by the drumming of the rain on the warehouse roof.  Pierce looked deflated, as if he hadn’t thought she’d know all this – but what did he expect when he asked for an _expert_?

            “The version of the story I had read,” Pierce said finally, “was not that they died, but that they were both miraculously turned to stone.”

            For a moment Nat wondered if he’d honestly hoped he’d discovered Sir Stephen and the Red Death themselves, but then she dismissed the idea.  Alexander Pierce was a grown man who ran a successful business.  He had to know better.

            “I understand if you’re disappointed,” Nat added.  She was disappointed, herself, that it wasn’t a stash of coins or jewelry.  There wasn’t nearly so much to be learned from these.  “I can assure you, though, that these are still very valuable works of art.  I’m sure any museum in the country would be happy to have them once we establish their provenance.”  Probably garden ornaments for some wealthy local who thought his house was built on the spot where the two knights died.  There were several towns which made that claim.

            “Yes, thank you, Dr. Jones,” said Pierce with a sigh.  He leaned to his right a little, looking past the statues at the river doors as if expecting somebody to come through them, and Natasha noticed there was a horseshoe nailed up above each.  Apparently they hadn’t brought him good luck today.  He nodded to his employees, and they began to put the tarps back.

            “Actually,” said Nat, holding up a hand, “can I get some photographs?  I’m sure there’s somebody at the University who could work on these for you.”  The curators of the Scottish Art Collection were probably already drooling, without even knowing why.

            “No.  No photographs,” said Pierce.  He put an arm around Nat’s shoulders to escort her away, and he had to stamp down hard on her urge to throw him through the wall.  When she glanced back, she saw the employees carefully arranging the tarps to cover the statues entirely.  “We’ll need to get some more data before I let anybody else know about this.  I need your word that you won’t go talking to your colleagues, Dr. Jones.”

            “Um… if you insist,” said Nat.  If he wasn’t going to tell anybody about the statues, how did he expect to learn anything about them?  “Have you had anybody else here to look at them, besides me?” she asked.

            “I’m afraid that, among other things, must be revealed at the proper time,” said Pierce.  “Trust me, when it happens, you’ll hear about it.”

            It was still raining outside when Nat returned to her car, with Pierce standing in the still-open door watching her as if he couldn’t wait for her to be gone.  He waved to her as she started the car, but she did not wave back.  Apparently they were planning on spending more time at the warehouse – maybe they had a couple of other ‘experts’ lined up, looking for one who would tell them what they wanted to hear.  If so, he was going to be at that for a while.  In the mean time, Nat decided to stop for a snack before heading back to Dundee.

            She could have gone to the shopping centre just north of the warehouses, but since she was so close to Inverness, Natasha decided to head into the city proper and go to the Castle Tavern.  This was a quaint little brick building on the end of a row of shops.  It had an outdoor patio, empty today because of the chilly summer rain, but the inside, decorated in rich warm reds and yellows with wooden railings and wrought iron fixtures, was busy and full of the smells of pub food.  Nat ordered a plate of their very good shepherd’s pie and a cup of coffee, and sat down at the bar to eat.

            Rain continued to patter against the windows, and a sea of coloured umbrellas went to and fro outside.  Nat checked the weather app on her phone, hoping it would clear in the next hour or so, and as she waited for the GPS to figure out where she was, a very strange person entered the pub.

            The man was quite short, not even five feet tall, with wild white hair and bushy mutton chops that made him look like a nineteenth century gentleman from an old painting.  Equally strange, he was dressed as if he were going to a fancy party, in an impeccable double-breasted suit and silk ascot.  These were black, as was his shirt.  He stood out sharply in the restaurant full of casually-dressed locals and tourists, and Natasha wasn’t the only one trying not to stare as he crossed the room.

            He seemed to know where he was going, though.  He came up beside Natasha and gave her an awkward smile and showed some oddly sharp teeth.  “Are you Dr. Jones from Dundee?” he asked, in a curious accent.

            “Um, yes.  That’s me,” said Nat cautiously.  She wasn’t used to being recognized by strangers.  Was this odd man really looking for Dr. Natalie Jones?  Or could he be looking for Natalia Romanova?

            “I thought so,” the man said.  He pulled out the chair next to her and climbed up to perch on it, his legs swinging above the floor.  “I’ve read your work on the knights’ tombs at Stirling.  May I join you?”

            “Feel free,” said Natasha, seeing as he already had.  The paper on the knights’ tombs at Stirling was something she’d put together to flesh out her fake credentials.  She’d thought the conclusions she’d come to here obvious, but everybody else had always seemed impressed by it.  “And you are?” she tried.  That might tell her what he wanted.

            “Professor Zola,” he replied.  The smile was gone now, and his face was entirely serious but far more relaxed-looking, as if the very act of smiling were unnatural to him.

            The name wasn’t familiar, either.  “Nice to meet you,” Nat said politely.  “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with _your_ work.”

            “I’m in a different field,” he said. “So what brings you up north on this beautiful Scottish day?” The words were something a person might say in the attempt to be charming, but Zola’s voice and face were so serious that he sounded almost threatening.

            That did, however, suggest another reason for his interest in her.  Maybe this man _wasn’t_ looking for an escaped Black Widow in hiding.  Maybe he wanted information about Pierce’s find.  “I don’t think I’m at liberty to discuss that,” she said.

            He nodded.  “As I thought.  The stone knights.”

            So he was already aware of them, then.  “Have you had a look at them yet?” Nat asked.

            “I haven’t yet had the pleasure,” Zola replied.  “Which does rather upset me.  He promised to let me know when he got them back to Inverness.”

            “Well, don’t get too excited,” Nat warned him.  Pierce had been so insistent on secrecy, she wondered if this Zola had told somebody about his own invitation, and Pierce had changed his mind when he found out.  “They’re definitely not what he wants to believe they are.  They’re beautiful,” she added, “but they’re not medieval.”

            “How tragic,” Zola said, although he didn’t sound sad about it.  “But they _are_ , in fact, Sir Stephen and the Red Death?”

            “I’d be very surprised if they weren’t,” said Nat.  “The iconography was very clear.  Red skull on the helm, star on the shield.”  She wondered belatedly if Pierce’s request that she not talk about the statues was so that _Zola_ couldn’t hear about them.  Too late now.

            “And the Grail?” asked Zola.

            Nat blinked.  “I’m sorry?” she asked.

            “The Grail!” Zola repeated.  “Did he say anything about that?”

            “What?  You mean… you mean the Holy Grail from the Arthurian story?” asked Nat.  That was the only _grail_ she could think of off the top of her head, but it didn’t belong in this context at all.  What did the Holy Grail have to do with a couple of eighteenth-century statues of fictional eleventh-century warriors?  The Arthurian cycle was French folklore from around a hundred years _after_ the Battle of Hastings, concerning people who were supposed to have lived five or six centuries _before_ it.  As far as mythical heroes of the Norman invasion went, it was utterly irrelevant.

            But Zola said, “yes!” before taking in the expression on Nat’s face.  “No?”

            “No,” Nat said, still puzzled.  “Did Mr. Pierce say there would be?”

            “No, not exactly,” said Zola.  He’d been sitting up straight, leaning eagerly forward to hear what she had to say, but now he settled back down, disappointed.  “It’s only a theory we had.  Never mind.  The rain seems to be letting up, so I won’t keep you.  Good afternoon, Dr. Jones.”  He was already sliding down from his barstool as he spoke, and he waddled out without waiting for Natasha to say goodbye.  Maybe he thought he’d embarrassed himself.

            “Are you done with your plate?” asked a voice by Nat’s ear.

            She jumped, and turned to see the barmaid reaching for the dishes.

            “Sorry,” the woman said, “didn’t mean to startle you.”

            “Oh, it’s all right,” said Nat.  “I’m not usually so easy to startle.”  She glanced at the window, but Zola had vanished.  “Did you see that guy?”

            “The wee goblin-looking fellow?  Aye, you weren’t dreaming,” said the Barmaid.  “Who was he?”

            “Some kind of professor, apparently,” Nat said.  He hadn’t given her an answer when she’d prompted him for information about his work.  That was strange, too.  Most academics were happy to talk about it, at great length, even while their audience tried to escape.  He hadn’t even said where he taught.

            The pub had wifi, so Nat closed her forgotten weather app and let the Barmaid refill her coffee, and did some preliminary research.  A Google search for _Professor Zola_ turned up a couple of people in Switzerland and Liechtenstein who were definitely not the odd little man she’d just met.  When that failed, she tried _Sir Stephen and the Red Death_ and _Holy Grail_.  Filtering out results that didn’t contain both took her to a series of conspiracy theory websites, suggesting that the grail was from outer space and the Catholic church had erased all trace of it from the historical record because the existence of aliens would invalidate Christianity.

            That certainly didn’t count as academic work, but it did give Natasha a clue who Zola might be.  He probably wasn’t a professor of anything.  More likely, he was just a crank, something on the order of the treasure-hunters who thought they’d found a flying saucer on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, or the self-styled ‘professor’ who claimed to have discovered pyramids in Bosnia.  If Pierce hadn’t invited Zola to see the statues, it was probably because he wanted nothing to do with the man.

            Too bad it hadn’t been Norman gold.

            When Nat had chosen ‘archaeologist’ as her new career, it had been because it sounded interesting and because unlike Indiana Jones, real archaeologists tended to be quiet academic types who didn’t get a lot of publicity if they didn’t want it.  As Natalie Jones she could keep her head down and hide, without dying of boredom.  She hadn’t expected that she would come to _care_ so much when people didn’t understand her field, but she did.  Pierce’s willful ignorance and this Zola’s conspiracizing actually made her a little _angry_.  There was just no reason for that kind of foolishness.

            Maybe it upset her because people ought to know their own history.  Maybe it was because the difference between real and invented history had been such an important factor in Natasha’s own life.  Or maybe, as her teachers used to accuse her, Nat was simply prone to caring too much.  Whatever the reason, this was going to annoy her every time she thought about it for _days_.

            The storm had moved southeast, so as Nat drove back to Dundee she was heading into it.  Soon it was raining heavily again.  The constant clunk and swish of the wipers helped to calm her down, and Inverness vanished behind her in a gray haze.  It wasn’t until the next day when she found out what had happened there after Zola fled from the pub. 

* * *

            Morning found Nat unconcernedly checking her schedule as she walked into the archaeology department offices in one of the grand old stone and brick buildings at Dundee University.  It was mid-July and most classes were not in session, but her introductory Latin class was at ten-thirty, and she was going to give a quiz she would have to mark.  After that she would have office hours, and she wanted to put in some work on the paper she was planning to present at the Gender and Medieval Mysticism seminar in Mainz next month.  Then, in the evenings, she taught a self-defense class to female students.  The movies might have made archaeology look exciting, but in real life it was mostly dirt and paperwork.

            “Morning, Nat,” said the department secretary, a stocky middle-aged woman with dark hair in a thick braid down her back, and a Scottish accent so strong it sometimes made her difficult to understand.

            “Morning, Sue,” Nat replied, tucking her phone back into her jacket pocket.  “How’s Brandon?”  Sue had been obliged to take a couple of days off recently, after her thirteen-year-old son had broken his collarbone skateboarding.

            “He’s all plastered up and complaining constantly,” Sue replied, “but they tell me he’ll recover.  Thanks for asking.  You have a telephone message, though,” she added.  “It was about twenty minutes ago.  Somebody in Inverness wants you to ring her back, so I sent her to your voicemail.”

            “Okay, thanks,” said Nat, as if she didn’t find this particularly interesting.  Actually, the feminine pronoun had caught her attention.  The mention of Inverness made her fear that Pierce was asking her to reconsider or that Zola wanted to talk to her again – but it was a woman?  “I’ll give it a listen.”

            Once in her office, Natasha hung her black Sherpa jacket on its peg and put down her purse, and pressed the button on her landline voicemail.

            _You have… one… message_ , the recording informed her, and then a woman’s voice spoke.  _Good morning, Dr. Jones.  This is Detective Inspector Sharon Carter of the Inverness police.  I understand you spoke with Mr. Alexander Pierce yesterday, and we were wondering if we could ask you some questions about it_.

            Nat didn’t know what she’d expected, but it hadn’t been that.  Why would the police want to know about Pierce?  Had he _stolen_ those statues?  Or worse, had something happened to _him_?  Maybe Zola, desperate to gain access and prove whatever his grail theory was, had harmed him either on purpose or by accident.  She picked up the handset, and dialled the number DI Carter had left.

            By an hour later, she had emailed her students – all five of them – to tell them that class was cancelled for today, and was back on the road to Inverness with the morning sun glaring in her rear view mirror.

            The news feeds Natasha subscribed to were mostly international, as she tried to keep tabs on her former masters and anybody else who might present a danger to her new civilian life.  To get news from within Scotland she’d had to look up the _Inverness Courier_ , and when she did, Alexander Pierce was the top story.  A riverside warehouse just outside the city had burned to the ground.  Its owner, the founder and president of the Pierce Resources Group, was missing.  There was an enormous amount of blood at the scene and an unidentified corpse in the river, but no witnesses and no evidence of where the fire began.  But particularly strange from Nat’s point of view was that, of four articles she skimmed in different papers, there was not a single mention of the two statues, either as something present or as something missing.

            Maybe the police hadn’t considered them important.  Maybe they’d been taken away as evidence, or had cracked and crumbled in the heat of the fire, or were one of those things the police withheld from the media in order to weed out fake witnesses.  Or maybe somebody had taken them.  It was entirely possible that Natasha was just too used to thinking like a spy, but she was betting on the latter.


	2. The River John Doe

            Although she’d been asked to go to the police station, Natasha detoured back to the warehouse to see what was going on there.  Yesterday it had been a drab, slightly dilapidated but otherwise un-interesting building, the type people probably never paid any attention to anymore despite its size.  It had been there long enough that it was simply part of the landscape.  Today, it was a smoking shell surrounded by crime scene tape and emergency vehicles, and crawling with forensics people in head-to-toe white plastic clean suits.

            Nat turned right onto the road that led out to the lonely buildings.  From here she couldn’t see any sign of the statues, but they’d been at the back of the building, next to the loading docks that took in cargo from the river.  The closer she got, the more the still-standing front walls were in the way, and long before she got past them, a uniformed officer had stepped out into the road to stop her.

            “Sorry, Lass,” he said, leaning down to speak to her through the window.  “We need you to leave.  This is a crime scene.”

            “It is?” Natasha asked innocently, glancing at the yellow tape.  “I couldn’t tell.  I’m Dr. Jones from Dundee University.  DI Carter asked me to come.”  If she were lucky, maybe Carter would actually be here, and Nat could sneak a look around.

            The officer’s expression suggested he didn’t believe DI Carter had asked Dr. Jones to meet her at the _scene_.  “Let me ring her,” he said, pulling out his mobile phone.  “Stay in your vehicle, please.”

            Nat did so, keeping the engine running and drumming her fingers on the steering while he made his call.  The offer began to pace as he waited for somebody to answer, and while his back was turned, Natasha opened the sunroof and popped her head out for another quick look at the ruins.  There was still no sign of the statues, but it did look very much as if some of the forensics were standing around examining a medieval battleaxe lodged in the remains of one of the crates.  That had to be an illusion, didn’t it?

            The officer turned around again, and Nat ducked back into her car and closed the roof.  When he came to talk to her again, he found her still waiting impatiently.

            “Dr. Jones?” he said.  “DI Carter wants you to meet her at Six Burnett Road.  That’s the police station.”

            Nat smiled pleasantly at him.  “Thank you,” she said.  “I’ll head right over.” 

* * *

 

            Detective Inspector Sharon Carter turned out to be a blonde woman not much older, though several inches taller, than Natasha herself.  She was waiting at the gate to station on Burnett Road, which was a low, modern brick building that seemed almost to be crouched behind the wall that surrounded it, as if hiding.  Carter opened the gate to let Nat in, and then directed her to a parking space.

            “Dr. Jones?” she asked, as Nat got out of her car.

            “In person,” Natasha replied.  “Inspector Carter?”

            “That’s me.”  The two women shook hands.  “Come on inside,” Carter said.  “Can we offer you a cup of tea?”

            “What, no whiskey?” Natasha affected surprise.  “It’s almost eleven!”

            Carter laughed.  “Not for witnesses,” she said.  “We need you to remember the details.”

            Somebody did bring two cups of tea and a late of very dry shortbread cookies, and DI Carter got Natasha settled in a little interrogation room with no walls or windows and a security camera in the corner.  They sat down on either side of a small table, and Carter turned on a digital recorder.

            “I guess you heard about what happened to Mr. Pierce,” she said.

            “I looked it up after I got your message,” Natasha said.  “Has there been a ransom demand or anything?”  If Zola had kidnapped or killed him for the statues, she was guessing not.

            “Not yet,” said Carter.

            _Yet_ meant that one was still a possibility, which meant they didn’t know for sure that the man was dead.  “So the blood at the scene isn’t his?” Natasha asked.

            “We don’t know.  The fire destroyed a lot of the DNA,” Carter said.  She was studying Nat’s face carefully, the same way Nat was studying hers.  “Did you know Mr. Pierce very well?”

            “Oh, no, I only met him yesterday,” said Nat sheepishly.  Her spy thinking had kicked in again, and she’d forgotten that she was supposed to be _answering_ questions, not _asking_ them.  If she wasn’t careful, she was going to make herself sound like a suspect by taking too much interest in the investigation.  “Sorry, I watch a lot of crime shows on TV.”

            DI Carter looked a little dubious of that excuse, but accepted it for now.  “Tell me about your meeting with him.”

            “Well,” Nat began, “he had asked me to come and look at his statues.”  Again, she watched Carter’s face as she spoke, looking for a reaction.

            She got a frown, and a forehead furrowed in puzzlement.  “What statues?”

            “The two statues he was keeping in that warehouse.”  It seemed that Nat’s hunch was correct.  The statues were missing, and the police didn’t know they’d existed.

            Carter leaned forward a little, sensing she was on to something important.  “Tell me about them.”

            Nat described her meeting with Pierce, the statues themselves and the conclusions she’d come to – and then went on to her weird little conversation with the man called Zola.  Carter kept the recorder running, and made some physical notes as well.  It was clear that all this was completely new to her.

            “You believe me, right?” Nat asked.  It had occurred to her that if Carter already thought of her as a suspect, she might well think Natasha had made up the whole unlikely story.

            “I’m a detective – I don’t _believe_ anything, I just collect leads to follow,” Carter said.  “I’ve heard stranger things.  Are you willing to work with a sketch artist to get us a picture of this Zola character?”

            “Of course,” said Natasha.  “In fact, I’ll do one better – I’ll draw him for you myself.”  She reached across the table for Carter’s notepad and pencil.  Nat had been taught to draw.  It was a surprisingly useful skill for a spy sometimes.

            “I’ll get somebody in here to do up a proper identikit,” Carter promised.  She began to stand up, only to pause as her phone rang.  “Just a moment.”

            Nat nodded, and worked on her sketch while Carter went to a corner of the room to have some privacy for her conversation.  Zola had looked around fifty, with a high forehead and small features in the middle of rather meaty cheeks… as if his face were too small for the head that wore it.

            “What?” she heard Carter say.  “Since when?”

            Nat looked up.  Carter was still standing off in the corner, facing the wall so her expression could not be seen.  Her posture, however, was bolt upright.  She’d just been told something that had shocked her.

            The person on the other end replied.  Natasha couldn’t hear what was said, but she could see the slight movement of Carter’s shoulders as she swallowed nervously.

            “Hold that thought.”  Carter glanced over her shoulder at Natasha.  “I’ve got somebody here who might be able to help ID him.”  She covered the phone with her hand and turned around.  “You said Pierce had a couple of other men with him yesterday.  Bodyguards or something.”

            “Security of some sort, four of them,” said Nat with a nod.  “Did you find one?”

            “Maybe,” Carter said.  “Would you recognize any of them if you saw them again?”

            “I think so,” Nat replied.  She was still in the habit of looking closely at people, even when she didn’t mean to.  “I’m pretty good with faces.”

            Carter nodded.  “Then we’ll finish up with Zola later.  Right now I need you to come to Raigmore Hospital with me.  When you read the newspapers, did they mention the John Doe they found in the river beyond the warehouse?”

            “The paper mentioned him.”  Natasha folded her drawing of Zola and stuffed it in her purse, then got up to put her jacket back on.

            “Turns out he’s alive after all,” said Carter.  “We haven’t been able to figure out who he is, but if you can tell us whether he worked for Pierce that might point us in the right direction.”

            Nat did her zipper up.  “I’ll follow you.” 

* * *

 

            Carter’s unmarked police car led the way up Harbour Road, avoiding the old, twisting streets in the city center in favour of a more direct route.  Raigmore Hospital was a large, modern building of steel and glass, which looked very out of place in the same city as Inverness’ red sandstone castle and the Tudor-style stone and plaster buildings that lined the river to the west.  That was one of the things Nat liked about Europe, and one of the reasons she’d chosen to stay there instead of going to America, where most of her spy work had been done – the way the old and the new sat so casually beside one another.

            Inside the hospital, Carter showed her badge to the woman at the front desk and explained that they were expected, and the receptionist paged Dr. Wilson.  He must have been waiting for them, because he arrived only seconds later – a tall black man with his hair cut very short, and a tidy goatee.  He was dressed in slightly stained blue surgical scrubs under his white lab coat, and was carrying a clipboard under his arm.

            “Good to see you again, Inspector Carter,” he said.

            “Thanks, Doctor,” Carter replied.  “This is our witness, Dr. Natalie Jones from Dundee.”

            “John Doe is in the ICU,” Dr. Wilson said.  “I’ll show you the way.”

            DI Carter was full of questions as he led them down the hospital’s white hallways.  “What happened?” she asked.  “We found him in the water.  He had no pulse, he’d been shot at least twice…”

            “Three times,” Dr. Wilson corrected her.  “Twice in the gut and once in the neck, and heavy sharp force trauma to the face, breaking six bones in the skull and exposing the brain.  The ambulance crew took him straight to the morgue.”

            “When did you realize he was alive?” Carter wanted to know.

            “They were about to start the autopsy when he suddenly gasped,” Wilson said.  “Probably scared poor Dr. Murray out of five years of her life.  We had to send her home.  We rushed him into surgery, where I took the bullets out and stapled up his skull, and now he’s resting.  If he makes it through the night, we’ll consider him the luckiest guy alive, although it’ll be months before we can get a proper assessment of the brain damage.”

            The third bed down in the Intensive Care ward held a man hooked up to various wires and tubes, with a nurse making notes as he checked the readouts on machines monitoring his breathing and heart rate.  The John Doe's appearance was a bit of a shock on multiple levels.  The first was the simple severity of his injuries.  He’d had sandy blond hair and a slightly darker beard, but both had been partially shaved in order to stitch up the side of his face, where there was a deep, ugly cut that ran from just above the ear diagonally to the corner of his mouth.  It was a miracle it had missed his eye.  His neck was bandaged and his skin was pale, and he looked very weak despite his muscular build.

            His chest was rising and falling gently as he breathed, though, and his eyes were twitching behind their lids.  This man was very much alive, which was quite impressive considering the injuries Dr. Wilson had catalogued.  He even had normal blood pressure, which Nat assumed meant he couldn’t have been the guy who’d apparently left several pints of blood at the warehouse crime scene.  Even stranger, the injury to his face didn’t look like something he’d suffered just last night.  Wounds and how they healed had been an important part of the Red Room’s curriculum.  This man looked like his injuries were at least a week old, and already knitting.

            Carter seemed to have noticed the same thing.  “How long ago was that?” she asked.

            “I called you as soon as he was out of surgery,” said Dr. Wilson.  “That’s his blood on my scrubs.”

            “So… less than an hour ago?”  Carter was astonished.  So, for that matter, was Natasha.

            “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Wilson said.  “I saw guys recover from some pretty major injuries in Afghanistan, but this guy had brain trauma that should have killed him even without the bullet wounds.  All I can say is he must have a hell of a constitution.”  He shook his head.

            Nat _had_ seen recoveries like it, but she wasn’t going to tell these two strangers that she’d witnessed top-secret Soviet human enhancement experiments.  _Something_ had clearly been done to this man, though, because otherwise there was no way he should have survived that head wound.  Even that, however, was not as much of a shock as the single most surprising thing about him, which was that Natasha did recognize him – and he _wasn’t_ one of Pierce’s security men.

            “Dr. Jones.”  Carter turned to Natasha.  “Is this one of the men you saw yesterday?”

            Nat honestly wasn’t sure how to answer that.  “What was he _wearing_ when you found him?” she asked.  There had to be some kind of explanation for this.  Nat had seen some strange things in the Red Room, but _this_ was completely new.

            “Some kind of costume,” Carter replied.  “Chain mail and little leather slippers.  The mail was one of the reasons we immediately figured he was dead.  Even if he’d survived his physical injuries, all that metal would have dragged him down and drowned him.”

            “And a shield with a star on it?” asked Natasha.

            “Yes,” said Carter.  “That was in the stuff they pulled up from the river bottom.  You know him.  Who is he?”

            Nat took one last look to be sure of what she was seeing – but she wasn’t mistaken.  She had, as she’d mentioned, always been good with faces, and the features on the two statues had been very distinct.  She just didn’t know what it all _meant_.

            “I don’t know who he is,” said Nat, “but apparently he’s _supposed_ to be Sir Stephen of Rogsey.  The two statues I told you about were of Sir Stephen and his nemesis, Count John the Red Death, who are supposed to have died in 1066 somewhere up near the Braemore area.”  Pierce had mentioned the legend that they were turned to stone, but… no, that was just _stupid_.  A better idea occurred to her.  “This guy must have modeled for Sir Stephen, which would mean the two statues are modern fakes, never mind eighteenth century.”  _That_ made sense – and yet, what would he have been doing there, in costume, when the statues were already finished?  “I don’t know why he was there or who beat him up, though.”

            “Huh,” said Carter.  “Well, if we can find whoever _carved_ the statues…”

            She continued to speak, but Natasha didn’t hear what Carter said next, because the world seemed to come to a dead halt as she noticed something else – the man in the hospital bed had opened his eyes.

            At first Nat assumed it had to be some kind of reflex action.  Even as quick to heal as he clearly was, this man had to be in terrible pain, and the hospital had probably pumped him so full of opiates he might well think he _was_ Sir Stephen of Rogsey.  He couldn’t possibly be conscious.  But then his right hand twitched, and he raised it slowly to feel at the oxygen mask on his face.

            That got Carter’s and Wilson’s attention, as well.  “Oh, my god!” Carter exclaimed.  “Is he _awake_?”

            The nurse in attendance put a hand on the man’s shoulder.  “Sir,” he said.  “If you can hear me, you need to stop moving.  You’ve been badly injured and you have to rest.  We’ll get you something for the pain.”

            The man in the bed wasn’t listening to him.  His fingers fumbled a little, then got a grip on the tube running off the mask, and he started trying to pull it off.

            “Oh, Sir, don’t do that.”  The nurse tried again to settle the patient down, then yelped in surprise and pain as the man grabbed his wrist and bent it back, then threw him to the floor.  He sat up and pulled the oxygen mask off, leaving it hanging around his neck by the elastic, then began yanking the IV lines and electrodes off his chest and arms.  The nurse started to get up again, but Dr. Wilson stepped in front of him.

            “Stay down,” he ordered, pressing the button to summon help.  “We’ll get him sedated.”  Wilson put his hands on the injured man’s shoulders and tried to make him lie down again.  “Sir, I need you to keep still,” he said.  “You’ve just come out of surgery, and if you try to get up you’re going to hurt yourself.”

            Dr. Wilson was a much larger man than the nurse, but the mystery man shoved him backwards and staggered to his feet.  The world seemed to go silent around Natasha as she watched it all unfold.  This couldn’t be happening, could it?  This man had been shot, had his face sliced open and his skull cracked, and then been thrown in a river.  It was a miracle he was even alive.  How could he be standing?  Was he some kind of zombie?  As when she’d asked the barmaid whether she’d also seen Zola, Nat now looked at Carter to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating the whole thing.

            Carter was standing with her stance wide and a hand inside her jacket as if to pull out a weapon, but she was looking right back at Natasha, as if _she_ couldn’t believe what she was seeing, either.  And while the two women stood there staring, the injured man stumbled past Dr. Wilson and the nurse and out the door.

            Instinct took over.  This man was trying to escape, so Nat chased him.  She burst through the door behind him and saw him come to a halt in the hallway, narrowly missing an empty gurney.  The orderly pushing it cried out and quickly steered the gurney towards the wall so as not to hit him.  The mystery man turned to go in the other direction, saw Natasha, and looked around desperately for an other option.  There was only one: a set of swinging doors that led into a stairwell.  Moving far faster than anyone in his state had a right to, he went for that.

            Nat ran after him.  Footsteps behind her told her that other people were following, but she didn’t look back.  One of the first rules she’d learned in the Red Room was _never take your eyes off your prey_.

            In the stairwell, a man was sitting a few steps down with another nurse attempting to comfort him as he wept.  Both people looked up in surprise at the mystery man.  He stared back at them for a moment, and then since he couldn’t go down without jumping over them, he went up, climbing on all fours like a child.  Nat ran after him, taking the steps two or three at a time to catch up.

            The mystery man kicked out at her, forcing her to roll to the side.  She pushed off the wall and threw herself on top of him, grabbing him around the waist.  That must have hurt him, but he didn’t shout.  Instead, he rolled over on top of her, crushing her against the edges of the steps and forcing the air out of her lungs.  She had to let go, and he continued on up.

            “Stop where you are!  Police!” shouted DI Carter.  Nat sat up, panting, to find her on the landing at the bottom of the flight, holding up her badge.

            The mystery man ignored her entirely.  He vanished around the corner to the next flight, and Carter swore and followed him up.

            Dr. Wilson was behind her, but he stopped to check on Natasha.  “You okay?” he asked.

            “I’ll survive,” said Nat.  She let him help her up, ignoring her bruised ribs.

            Dr. Wilson patted her shoulder and then ran on up after Carter and the mystery man.  Nat took a couple more deep breaths before following.  Somewhere above, an alarm started to blare.

            They arrived at the top to find that the mystery man had broken open the emergency exit and run out onto the roof.  The bandages from his neck were lying abandoned on the steps.

            Nat, Carter, and Wilson followed him out.  The hospital roof was covered with gravel that crunched under their feet, in between a forest of elevator boxes and ventilation fans.  It must have been cold and painful on the mystery man’s bare feet, but he ran a few more metres before jogging to a sop, as he seemed to realize where he was.  He turned in a circle, taking in the landscape visible around them: the colleges, the shopping centre, and the suburbs that ran down towards the old city and the river.

            Dr. Wilson decided to risk addressing him again.  “Sir!” he called out.  “My name is Dr. Sam Wilson!  This is DI Carter and Dr. Jones!  We’re here to _help_ you!”

            The mystery man stared at him a moment, as if he’d been speaking a foreign language, then looked as if he were about to reply – but before he could, he was cut off by a loud roar from behind them.

            Everyone turned around.  On another part of the roof, beyond the emergency exit they’d just come out by, was the hospital’s air ambulance helipad.  The helicopter itself had just started its engines, and after a few seconds of warmup it rose from the pad to fly very slow overhead, low enough that Natasha could see how surprised the pilot was to find people on the roof looking back at him.  The mystery man dropped to his knees and raised his arm as if holding a shield over his head.  Perhaps he thought the helicopter was a dragon, about to swoop down on top of him.

            It didn’t, of course.  Instead, it flew away to the east on whatever mission it was on, and the thunder the blades slowly faded away.  The mystery man got unsteadily to his feet, and shaded his eyes to watch it grow smaller on its way to the horizon.

            Dr. Wilson went up and took the man’s arm.  “Sir,” he said again.  “You are at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.  You’ve been badly injured and we are trying to care for you.  Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

            The man stared at him for a moment, then said, “yes.”  His voice was raspy with exhaustion and shaking a little from shock.

            Natasha went up and took the man’s other arm, holding it gently but firmly, and she and Dr. Wilson escorted him back indoors.  One flight down, the male nurse was waiting for them, with a wheeled stretcher to take the mystery man back to his room.

            “Just climb on,” the nurse said.

            The mystery man looked at it and shook his head.  “I do not need to be carried,” he said.

            “Take it away,” Dr. Wilson said, “and have somebody find a bed for him on the High Dependency Ward.”  He glanced at his patient.  “I think we can discharge this guy from the ICU.  Call it a hunch.”

            The hospital staff found the mystery man a semi-private room, and Dr. Wilson managed to convince him to get back into bed.  Once he was settled, Wilson began undoing the bandages around his middle, already loosened during the escape attempt, to check on his bullet wounds.  Natasha remained standing at the foot of the bed, while DI Carter sat down in a folding metal chair to wait.

            Dr. Wilson examined the injuries, then asked another nurse for a pair of small scissors to begin removing the stitches.  Even having seen what the man had just done, Natasha could barely believe it.  He’d been _shot_ only yesterday night, and had already healed enough to have his stitches out.

            “What’s your name?” the doctor asked, carefully removing the surgical thread.

            “Sir Stephen,” the mystery man replied.  “Of Rogsey in Cornwall.”

            Nat rolled her eyes.  “Oh, you are _not_!” she said.

            Everybody looked at her.

            “I do not know you, lady,” said the self-described Sir Stephen.  His implication was that _she_ didn’t know _him_ , either, and was therefore in no position to tell him who he was or wasn’t.

            But Nat was absolutely determined that this situation, while it was unquestionably a crazy mess, could not possibly be _that_ crazy.  “I’m Dr. Natalie Jones,” she said firmly.  “I’m an archaeologist.  I know something about the middle ages.  Even if Sir Stephen of Rogsey had existed – which he didn’t – the stories say he died in 1066.  And if he could somehow come to the present, he wouldn’t speak modern English, even pseudo-Shakespeare fancy-talk English.  He’d be speaking Cornish Brittonic, or at _best_ some dialect of old Anglo-Saxon.  _Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon_.”  The first three lines of _Beowulf_ , which she'd memorized a bit of just so she could recite it to her classes.

            Sir Stephen frowned at her in confusion.

            “I rest my case,” said Nat.

            The nurse who was helping Dr. Wilson glanced at the chart in her hands.  “Should I put his name down here?” she asked.  She looked as if she were aware it was a dumb question, but was trying to stick to stuff she knew.  Nat sympathized.

            Dr. Wilson handed the scissors back to her and swabbed Sir Stephen’s abdomen with alcohol.  “Uh, you can put down Stephen.  Stephen Rog… is Rogsey a real place?” he looked at Nat.

            “Of course it’s a real place!” said Sir Stephen.  “I was born there!”

            “I have no idea,” said Nat.  “Google it.”

            “Put him down as Stephen Rogers,” Sr. Wilson told the nurse.  “That’s a name.”

            “I am here in the room,” said Sir Stephen, annoyed.  “You think me a madman, don’t you?”

            “We think you’re a man who’s been beat up pretty bad,” said Dr. Wilson.  “You’re not crazy, but you’ve suffered a very serious head injury and it’s gonna take some time to assess the effects.  We’re going to help you with that,” he promised.  “It’s our job.”

            “If you truly wish to help me, then would you bring me some meat or cheese, or at least a loaf of bread?” Sir Stephen asked.  “I fear I must eat a great deal.”

            “If the rest of your metabolism is as fast as your healing, I’m not surprised,” said Dr. Wilson.  “Let me see what I can do.”


	3. The Ten O'Clock News

            Dr. Wilson ordered a meal brought up from the hospital cafeteria – spaghetti and meatballs.  It took Sir Stephen a few tries to get the hang of using a fork, but once he had, he devoured three helpings and at six pieces of soggy garlic bread, which astonished everybody even further.

            “Pray tell,” Sir Stephen said as he ate.  “You said this was a hospital?”

            “Yes,” said Nat.  She knew what was _supposed_ to be going on here, of course – being as he was from the middle ages, he would ask where the monks were.  They would then have to tell him that it wasn’t that kind of hospital, and finish by astonishing him with the knowledge that he was in the twenty-first century.  She was _not_ going to play that game.

            “Raigmore Hospital, in Scotland,” said Dr. Wilson.

            “It’s not a religious institution,” Nat added.  “It’s just a place to care for the sick and injured.”

            “Scotland looked such a wild place in the parts I passed through in my pursuit of the Red Death,” Sir Stephen said.  “I had no idea other regions were so civilized.”

            “Yeah, we’re full of surprises,” said Nat.

            DI Carter wasn’t having any of the situation’s script, either.  She pulled a chair up next to Sir Stephen’s bed, and showed him her badge.  “I know you’re not feeling very well,” she said, “but I was hoping I could talk to you for a moment.  I’m Detective Inspector Carter, and I’m looking for a missing person.”  She turned on her phone and found a picture of Mr. Pierce – the same one that had appeared in the _Courier’s_ article that morning.  “Do you recognize this man?”

            Sir Stephen was still chewing on a mouthful of garlic bread as he examined it.  “No, I do not,” he decided.

            “He didn’t hire you to pose for a statue?” asked Nat.  She had to hang on to her theory that this man was an artist’s model, because to believe anything else would have been ridiculous.  Pierce must have promised those statues to somebody.  They would have been a remarkable find if they’d been Saxon, forcing historians to re-assess whether any number of old tales might be true.  Maybe Pierce and Zola had planned to pull off the archaeological hoax of the century, a modern-day version of Piltdown Man.  Calling Natasha had been a test, to see if they could fool an expert – they’d failed because Pierce was an idiot who’d gone to great trouble to get the armor and weaponry right but hadn’t bothered to look up what _kind_ of commemorative art was being made in the eleventh century.

            “I’ve never laid eyes on him,” Sir Stephen said, another forkful of spaghetti already halfway to his mouth.  “Unless it’s a poor likeness.”

            “The likeness is fine,” said Carter, and put her phone away.

            “Why were you at the warehouse, if Mr. Pierce didn’t invite you?” Natasha asked.

            “I cannot say,” said Sir Stephen.  “My last memory is of fighting the Red Death for the Grail map, and then…”

            “Grail map?” Nat interrupted.  “You mean the Holy Grail from the King Arthur stories?  Sir Galahad and everything?”  Maybe it was Zola, rather than Pierce, who’d hired this guy – but hired him for what?

            “The very same,” Sir Stephen said.  “I’d not have believed it myself, had I not seen it with my own eyes.”

            Nat pulled her half-finished sketch of Zola out of her purse.  “How about _this_ guy?” she asked.

            Even before he spoke, she could see in Sir Stephen’s face that he recognized the image.  “That is Zola,” he said.  “He is not a man, but a kobold.  The Red Death tricked him into a contract, and now he is bound to serve him.”

            “Kobold?” asked Dr. Wilson with a frown.  “Isn’t that supposed to be something like a German fairy?”

            Nat didn’t know, and didn’t care.  “Did _he_ hire you?” she asked Sir Stephen.

            “I serve King Harold,” the man replied, offended.  “I do not draw my blade for foreigners, or for goblins!”

            Nat gave up and offered the drawing to Carter, instead.  “Anyway, this is the man from the pub,” she said.  “I can polish it up if you want.”

            “He _looks_ like a goblin,” Carter observed.  “Yeah, finish that and we’ll see if we can find him – and the man who made those statues you mentioned for Mr. Pierce.”

            Nat pulled her chair over to a little table to get to work.  “You believe me now,” she noted.  Carter hadn’t been sure earlier.  Now she seemed happy enough to accept Natasha’s version of events, if only because they made more sense than anything else that had happened today.

            “I told you – I don’t _believe_ things,” Carter corrected, and sighed.  “We’re not going to be able to get any useful testimony out of Sir Steve.  Even if he eventually remembers something, it’ll be like that scene in _True Believer_ where they’ll be completely discredited if it ever comes up that the witness thinks Kennedy was murdered by the phone company.”  She took out her phone again and began checking for text messages.  “The ten o’clock news tonight is going to be weird.” 

* * *

            And Carter was right – but not in the way she thought.  The anchorman did mention the miraculous survivor of the unidentified man from the river, but only as a sort of footnote to the ongoing inquiry into the distance of Alexander Pierce.  Mrs. Pierce made a tearful plea for his safe return, and then the broadcast skipped on ahead to something entirely unexpected.

            “And now for the most sensational news of the day,” the anchorman, a balding South Asian man with a bushy mustache, announced.  “An Irish cryptozoologist – did I say that right?”  He looked at his co-anchor, a blonde woman in large glasses.  She just shrugged.  “An Irish cryptozoologist,” the anchorman went on, “claims to have done nothing less than capture the Loch Ness Monster!  We go now to Lochend, with Yvonne Kirkland.”

            The shot cut to a car park with a little row of houses on the edge of the lake beyond it, where a man was proudly showing off a creature he was keeping in a cage in the back of his pickup truck.  For something that was supposed to be a _monster_ it was disappointingly small, no bigger than a retriever.  It had the body of a seal, and it barked like one as it banged around inside the cage, trying to escape from all the humans staring at it, but its neck was about twice as long as the head perched atop it, as if the animal were trying to evolve into a dinosaur.

            “Darren O’Herlihy first came to Scotland from his native Belfast in 2011 to hunt for the legendary creature,” a female reporter said.  “Now he may just have found it.  Experts are loathe to assign an identity to the creature until they’ve had a chance to examine it for themselves, but first guesses are that it is a previously unknown species of long-necked pinniped.”

            “That doesn’t make sense,” Carter complained, through a mouthful of the pizza they’d ordered.  “Seals come out of the water to rest and breed – we used to hear them in the spring, when we’d visit my Gran in the Orkneys.  If there were seals living in the Loch we’d have known about it forever.”

            “I think we can write off the idea of today making any sense,” Natasha observed.

            “I think we can write off this _week_ making any sense,” Carter agreed.  The two women exchanged a glance and a nod, acknowledging that they were now friends.  There was nothing to bring women together like having to put up with men’s bullshit, and there’d been a _lot_ of bullshit today.

            On the other side of the room, Dr. Wilson asked Sir Stephen, “so then what happened?”

            Despite having already eaten the equivalent of several meals that day, Sir Stephen had also devoured half the pizza and, now that the initial novelty of the television had worn off, was telling Dr. Wilson a story about his quest for the Holy Grail.  It was a convoluted tale, with side characters like Sir James Buckeye and Lady Margaret of Cartaster.  Dr. Wilson had started off trying to take notes for whatever poor soul was assigned to be Sir Stephen’s psychologist, but now he was simply sitting by the bedside, listening raptly.

            “The Prioress then told me a great secret,” Sir Stephen said gravely.  “She said that the Red Death’s wicked soul was no object to his finding the Grail, because he already knew that the _true_ Grail was not the cup of Christ at all.  That was naught but a lie, to dissuade those wicked enough to want divine power.  She said Sir Galahad had discovered this, and was so horrified to think this was his true destiny that he chose to die, and sent Sir Percival home to invent some other story about his fate.  A beautiful lie, the Prioress said, was better than an ugly truth.”

            “So what was it?” Dr. Wilson asked.  “What was the grail, if it wasn’t the cup?”

            “None knew,” said Sir Stephen.  “Sir Galahad took the truth to his grave.  Some said it was the eye the god Wodan traded to the fates in order to see the future.  Others that it was the point of the Morrigan’s spear.  Still others that it was a stone that fell from the sky.  The Prioress said that whatever its origin, it was a tool of the demons of hell, and could be used only for evil.”

            “Better not let this Red Death get his hands on it, then,” said Wilson, with only a _slight_ smile on his lips.

            “Indeed,” said Sir Stephen.  “Buckeye and I decided we must retrieve it ourselves, and cast it back into the abyss from whence it came!  The Prioress gave us a silver cup the sisters used to celebrate mass, so that we might put that in its place for any who came after us.  They could believe they had found a sacred relic, and not be able to wield the true Grail’s evil power.”

            “Another beautiful lie,” Wilson observed.  “Was Lady Margaret still with you by now?”

            “Oh, no, she was still in Cartaster, raising her own army against the Normans,” said Sir Stephen.  “I neglected to mention that, didn’t I?  With most of my men in camp there, we hoped it would look as if we had stayed to help her in fortifying the town.  The Red Death was no fool, though.  He did not fall for such tricks, and we learned later that Zola had been among the sisters, having taken one’s shape, in order to overhear our plans.”

            “Why are you listening to this?” asked DI Carter.

            “Aw, some on, this is great,” said Dr. Wilson.  “This is the stuff little kids grow up on, knights and castles and quests!  I’d watch this movie.”  He reached to grab the last slice of pizza before Sir Stephen could get it.  “When I was six years old, my grandparents gave me a book of ‘chivalric stories’ for Christmas, and by the time I finished it I’d decided I was going to be a knight when I grew up.”

            “What led you to become a physician instead?” Sir Stephen asked him.

            “Not a lot of call for knights these days,” Dr. Wilson replied.  “I did join the army, though, so I guess that’s kind of close.  My favourite story was the one about Sir Sigmund, the guy who could talk to birds.”

            “After he tasted the blood of the dragon,” Sir Stephen agreed.  “I have heard the tale.”

            Nat shook her head and turned back to Carter, who had spent most of the afternoon and evening obsessively checking and re-checking her email.  “Anything yet on who made the statues?” she asked.

            “Not yet,” said Carter.  “They’ve confirmed it wasn’t anybody local, so we’re casting the net further afield.”

            Sir Stephen and Dr. Wilson had also returned to their own conversation.  “As well as the cup,” Sir Stephen continued, “the Prioress offered us two teeth of Saint Wilfred for protection against evil – and we would soon have cause to be grateful for them!  We set off into the night, dressed all in white so that we could go unseen against the snow.  Before we had gone so much as a mile, a terrible blizzard descended, so that we did not know which way was which and risked walking in circles.  Sir Francis swore it could only be an act of sorcery…”

            Dr. Wilson interrupted.  “Didn’t you say Sir Francis thought _everything_ was an act of sorcery, including bad cheese?” he asked – but before Sir Stephen could answer, the doctor’s phone rang.  “Just a sec, Sir Steve,” he said, and pulled the device out of his pocket to take the call.  “Wilson,” he said.

            Sir Stephen fell silent to let Dr. Wilson talk, which Natasha thought was odd behaviour from a guy who supposedly thought it was the eleventh century.  Maybe that, like his English, was another hint of reality poking through the layers of delusion.  “What about that?” she asked, pointing at Dr. Wilson.  “He’s talking to somebody who might be miles away.  Is _that_ an act of sorcery?”

            “Not at all,” Sir Stephen replied at once.  “There is no sacrifice required.  To perform magic requires that something be given in return.  That is merely a machine.  I did not know the Scots made such wonderful machines,” he added, sitting up a bit straighter so he could look out the window – his injuries had continued to heal over the course of the day, and he now seemed to be able to move without pain.  “I can see the carts with no horses on the roads below.  The city must be very wealthy, that there are so many.”

            “If only it were that simple,” DI Carter observed dryly.

            “What?” Dr. Wilson demanded of his caller.  “What do you… where did you get this number?”

            The other three looked up, all of them startled.  Dr. Wilson had so far seemed like a very laid-back person, the only one who was intrigued rather than annoyed by Sir Stephen’s condition.  This was the first time they’d heard him sound _angry_ about something.

            “I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did!” Dr. Wilson said to the caller.  “You’ve already said you’re not a friend or relative, so you don’t have anything to offer him, and he’s got enough people bothering him while he’s trying to get well.  You have a very good day,” he finished shortly, and tapped the screen to hang up.

            “Who was that?” asked DI Carter.

            “That reporter.”  Dr. Wilson put his phone back in his pocket.  “Kirkwell or whoever she was.  She wants an interview with Sir Steve, and she’s not gonna get it.”  He shook his head, then took a deep breath.  “Well, ladies, it’s been a long day, and I think we all need some rest.  I’m sure you two have work you need to get back to…”

            He was throwing them out, Nat thought.  That was fair enough – they didn’t have much to gain by being here.  Sir Stephen didn’t know anything that would be useful to DI Carter, and Natasha had told them everything _she_ knew.  It was still slightly annoying, though, because this situation was so weird that Nat would really have liked to know how it worked out.

            “Did you feel that?” asked DI Carter.

            “What?”  Nat looked up at her.  “What did you feel?”

            “It’s like… like a very faint vibration,” the detective replied.  “There it is again.”

            Nat _could_ feel it, she realized – a slight tremor in the soles of her feet.  She looked at a glass of water sitting on the bedside table next to Sir Stephen.  The surface was shivering in standing rings, and as she watched, the ripples grew deeper and her scalp began to prickle as the shaking intensified.

            “Where’s it coming from?” asked Dr. Wilson.  “It doesn’t feel like an earthquake.”

            Natasha had to agree.  The Great Glen was a geological fault line, but she’d been in earthquakes and they weren’t like this.  Earth tremors were random and sudden, and began with a sharp jolt that died away in rolling waves of vibration.  This was doing the opposite, starting soft and getting steadily more and more intense.

            Somewhere in the hospital, an alarm started to blare.  There was a _ping_ as the glass in the window cracked.  On the road outside, car horns honked as traffic came to a puzzled halt, and Nat decided that no matter what was happening, there was one thing for absolute certain.

            “We’ve gotta get out of here,” she said.

            “Yeah.  Yeah, I’ll go for that.”  Dr. Wilson grabbed Sir Stephen’s charts off the bedside table.  “Follow me.”

            Natasha and DI Carter helped Sir Stephen out of bed and into the hallway, where other doctors and patients were doing the same.  Some were already heading for the emergency exit routes, while others were just milling around, hoping somebody else knew more about what was going on than they did.  Everybody was frightened and confused.

            _May I have your attention, please_ , a man’s voice said over the PA.  _We are currently experiencing an earth tremor.  For your own safety, we must ask you to evacuate the building immediately.  If you cannot do so on your own, call for help and hospital staff will assist you.  Do not use the elevators unless you have no choice_.

            Two nurses were already at the nearest elevator, waiting with a patient on a wheeled stretcher.  They looked up at the speaker, then at each other, shifting nervously from foot to foot.  The patient was holding on to the stretcher rails, as if terrified that she would be shaken right off.

            “Stairs are there.”  Dr. Wilson pointed to a set of doors.  This was not the same stairwell Sir Stephen had attempted to escape up earlier, as they were in a different block of the hospital now, but when they went inside it looked similar, with linoleum steps and whitewashed walls.  A large number six stencilled on the wall told Natasha that it was a long way down.

            The building was now shaking so violently that they were jostled against the door frame, and dust was falling from the roof.  Dr. Wilson was already a few steps down, and Sir Stephen and the women were about to follow, when they heard a tremendous creaking roar.  A cloud of dust began to billow up from the lower floors.

            “We cannot go down!  We must go up!” Sir Stephen decided.  He pulled his arms free of Nat and Carter, and began climbing the steps.

            “We can’t go up!” Dr. Wilson protested.  “There’s no way back down again!”

            Below them there was a groan of bending metal, followed by a chilling human scream that was suddenly cut off.

            They went up.  Natasha didn’t bother to count the flights, though she was sure there were fewer than there would have been to the bottom.  The dust cloud rose around them, making it difficult to breathe and leaving them feeling their way along the walls and railings – but a couple of flights up, it also began to show a beam of light.  The door to the roof was open.  They scrambled up the last few steps and emerged onto the roof, right next to the elevator doors that opened to access the helipad.  The helicopter itself, yellow, green, and blue with the words _Scotland Charity Air Ambulance_ painted on the side, was sitting there as if waiting for them.

            “Yes!” squealed Natasha.  There was a way down after all.

            “Everybody, inside!” Dr. Wilson ordered.  He forced the door open and climbed into the cockpit.

            “You can fly a helicopter?” Natasha asked, both surprised and relieved.  She’d assumed she would have to come up with an excuse why _she_ knew how.

            “I hope so!  I haven’t done it since I was in the army!”  Dr. Wilson put his headphones on and started the engines.

            Nat helped Carter get Sir Stephen into the back, then pulled the doors shut.  “We’re in!” she shouted over the thumping rotors.

            “Then hold on!” said Wilson.

            Although the interior of the helicopter had seats for the paramedics and a place for a patient to lie down, Natasha, Carter, and Sir Stephen were all on their feet with their faces glued to the windows as they lifted off the roof.  The helipad seemed to drop out from under them as they rose slowly into the air – and then, with a thunderous roar that could be heard even over the thumping of the blades, it _literally_ dropped away as the roof collapsed.  Within seconds, the entire building had fallen into its own footprint, like a skyscraper being demolished.  Dust rose like the ash from an erupting volcano, obscuring the view.

            Nat closed her eyes, trying not to imagine that she could hear the people inside screaming.

            When she opened them again, the helicopter was circling the site at a distance, watching the dust blow away on the wind.  As it cleared, it was possible to see a heap of rebar and rubble where the building had been.  Police, fire, and rescue were already arriving, as other vehicles sped away.

            “What the hell _was_ that?” Carter asked, probably rhetorically.

            Sir Stephen answered her anyway.  “That, my lady,” he said, “was an act of sorcery.”

            She turned to stare at him.  “Sorcery?” she asked.  “That was an act of _terrorism_ , that’s what it was!”

            “I have seen such things before,” Sir Stephen insisted.  “It’s a particularly powerful form of magic, because you must persuade the demons to perform a task _before_ you give them their reward.”

            “Oh, shut up,” said Carter.

            Sir Stephen was undeterred.  “Normally a devil performs no service until blood has been spilled for it,” he explained.  “To bring down a building and kill all those inside requires it to take its master’s word that there _will_ be people within, and the blood will be enough to pay for its efforts.  And if the devil is disappointed in the results…”

            “ _Shut up_!” Carter repeated, rounding on him with ice in her eyes.  “Are you listening to yourself?  Do you have any idea how many people just died?  There must have been a hundred or more, who came there to be _cured_ , and now they’re dying in the rubble and you’re blaming _magic_?”

            “Terrible magic,” Sir Stephen said gravely.  “I know there are dead.  I was meant to be one of them!”  He moved up towards the cockpit, to talk to Dr. Wilson.  “I did not yet come to the next part of the tale.  The snow, I think, was meant to keep us from leaving the priory, and indeed, after less than an hour we tried to return.  When we did, though, we found the buildings had collapsed just the same way, with the blood of the sisters staining the snow.”

            “Yeah, good for you,” said Dr. Wilson, who was no longer so enamoured of the story.  “More important issue right now: it looks like hey hadn’t refuelled yet after their last trip.  We’ve got twenty minutes in the air according to the gauge here.  Where do we want to go?”

            He’d turned to the southwest, following the line of the Great Glen as they left the hospital area.  The cloud of dust from the collapsed hospital was lit brightly behind them by the setting sun, as if it were glowing from within. 

            “Away from here,” said Natasha.  That was all that mattered.  If somebody were trying to kill Sir Stephen, she had to take him to a place where that person couldn’t find him.

            “Burnett Road,” said Carter.  “I need to talk to my colleagues.  If that were an attempt on Sir Steve’s life, it might be connected to the disappearance of Mr. Pierce.”

            “Lochend,” said Sir Stephen, “and I shall prove to you that it was.”

            “Lochend?” asked DI Carter.  “There’s nothing there but an Irish nutter with a deformed seal!”

            “The woman who spoke to Dr. Wilson on his ‘mobile’ was there to tell of the beast, was she not?” Sir Stephen asked.  “If we can find her, I think she will tell you that she did not request an interview at all.  I think you will learn it was Zola you spoke to, hiding behind her voice as he hid behind the face of one of the sisters.  And if it were he who wanted to be sure I was in the hospital, it will have been the Red Death’s sorcery that brought the building down.”

            Nat thought about it.  “All right,” she said.  “Lochend.”  It wasn’t that far away, maybe ten kilometres down the A82.  Easy to find, easy to get back from.

            “You must be joking,” Carter said.

            “No,” said Nat.  “You’re assuming Sir Steve’s making this all u, but what if he’s not?  What if it’s a twisted version of things that really happened?”  If the last thing he’d done was compare himself in costume to the statue of Sir Stephen of Rogsey, that might explain why he now believed he _was_ Sir Stephen of Rogsey.  Maybe this was her spy brain intervening again, but Nat didn’t want to leave the possibility unexplored.  “Maybe the reporter called Dr. Wilson because somebody paid her to, and once they knew he was there, then they bombed the place.”  That _almost_ made sense, except that what had happened at the hospital hadn’t felt like a bomb any more than it had felt like an earthquake.

            “I think you’re reaching,” said Carter.

            “It’s not a terrible idea,” Dr. Wilson said.  “We’ll be in somebody’s way if we land in the city, because they’ll be dispatching rescue workers from everywhere they can, especially the airfield, but that little car park we saw on the news had space to put a helicopter.  And it’s not so far away that it’ll be a big hassle for them to drive a fuel truck out there to get it back.”

            Carter sighed.  “Okay, Lochend.  I’ll have to make a telephone call when we arrive.”

            “As long as it’s unanimous,” Dr. Wilson said, and grabbed the radio.  “Um, hello?  INV air traffic control?  My name is Dr. Sam Wilson.  I just escaped the Raigmore Hospital collapse in the air ambulance.  I’ve got a patient, a cop, and a guest on board.  We’ve decided to fly up the river to land at Lochend, but it’s been about six years since I last flew a helicopter.”

            Somebody at the airport gave Wilson some guidelines for the flight, and they made their cautious way down the Great Glen.  Days were long in the Highlands in June, but by now it was twilight and rapidly getting darker.  Lights were burning in the towns and tourist hotels along the river and the shores of Loch Dochfour.  The water itself was very dark, reflecting the last light of the sunset and a bright half moon.

            “Did you ever hear about a monster here?” Nat asked Sir Stephen, out of idle curiosity.  She was pretty sure she’d read somewhere that there were medieval legends about ‘great fish’ in the Loch, but had no idea what their content was or how old they were.

            “The first time I ventured this far north was in pursuit of the Red Death,” said Sir Stephen.  “Nobody warned me of a monster.”

            “The BBC went through the whole Loch in 2003 with sonar, and they didn’t find a thing,” said Carter.  “You’d think that would have been the end of it.  My guess is that guy caught a seal somewhere else and brought it here himself so he could ‘discover’ it.”

            “Are you so skeptical about everything?” Sir Stephen asked.

            “Yes,” said Carter.  “Like I told Dr. Jones, I don’t _believe_ in things.  I follow leads.  When I see where they take me, that’s reality.  It’s not about what I believe.”

            “Trust is truth, whether you believe in it or not,” said Sir Stephen.

            He thought he was arguing with her, but Carter treated it as an agreement.  “Exactly,” she said.  “If I start off _believing_ things, I’ll be looking for evidence that confirms my belief, rather than for the truth.  Finding the truth is my _job_.”

            “Mine, too,” Natasha said thoughtfully.  Archaeology and detective work were very similar, really – both involved looking for evidence of past events and trying to reconstruct what had actually happened.  The only difference was that Nat’s cases were very much colder than Carter’s.  It was a strange thing to realize only after she’d been doing this as a cover for several years now, especially when she contrasted it with the career she’d been raised for, which had often been about obscuring or even destroying the truth and the traces it left.

            She wondered what a psychologist would think of that.  Was Natasha trying to somehow redeem the years she’d spent hiding the truth by helping to reveal it instead?  Or was she still just a child who wanted to be Indiana Jones?

            “I can see the Bona Lighthouse,’ said Dr. Wilson.  “Air Traffic told them we were coming, and it looks like they’ve lit up the car park for us.  Hopefully somebody moved the monster.”

            He turned on the helicopter’s landing lights, and managed to make a nice soft landing in the car park outside the Kimcraigan Bed and Breakfast.  More than a dozen people were gathered there waiting for them, including a news van and an ambulance, but rather than climb out, Dr. Wilson just turned off the engines and slumped back in the pilot’s seat with a massive sigh of relief.

            “Never thought I’d have to do that again,” he said.  “Maybe I should take some lessons and renew my license.  Can’t hurt.”

            It was Natasha who opened the rear door, and the first person she saw was the woman from the ten o’clock news, the one who’d reported on the monster capture.  She was taller than Nat but shorter than Carter, with bottle-blonde hair in a pixie cut and multiple earrings in each ear.  The helicopter’s arrival had apparently caught her in her off time, since she was now wearing a sweater and jeans instead of a blouse and jacket, but her cameraman was right behind her.

            “Good evening,” she said, coming up to meet Nat.  “I’m Yvonne Kirkland from Channel Four Scotland.  May I have a word about the events at Raigmore?  I understand you were witnesses.”

            “I’d rather not, thanks,” said Natasha, trying to be polite.  Reporters always showed up at the worst possible moment, and she tried to avoid having her face on TV where people from her past might see it.

            DI Carter climbed down next, and the two of them reached to help Sir Stephen again – but this time he gently refused, preferring to demonstrate that he was able to stand and walk on his own.  “I am quite healed,” he said.  “Or nearly so.”  In the glaring lights set up in the car park the wound to his face looked deep and furrowed, but it also looked months old.  Nat wondered if there would be a scar, or if it would have vanished entirely by the morning.

            “Would either of you mind telling our viewers what you saw when the hospital collapsed?” the reporter asked Carter and Sir Stephen.

            “Yes, we would mind,” said DI Carter.  “We mind very much.”

            “I…” Sir Stephen began.

            “He would _definitely_ mind,” Carter said, putting a hand in the middle of Sir Stephen’s chest to stop him from approaching the news people.  Nat could almost see what Carter was thinking – she must be imagining Sir Stephen telling the entire United Kingdom that a wizard had brought down the hospital.  It _was_ a horrible thought.

            Dr. Wilson was now finally climbing out, and Kirkland decided to give it one more try.  “Excuse me, Sir,” she said, “I’m Yvonne Kirkland from…”

            “I know who you are,” snarled Dr. Wilson, causing Kirland to take an involuntary step back.  He took Sir Stephen’s arm to escort him over to the waiting ambulance.  “Come on, Sir Steve, let’s get you looked at.”

            “Maybe get him something to wear,” Natasha agreed.  Sir Stephen was still dressed only in a paper hospital gown, and it was sagging open at the rear.  He had a very shapely backside, but that didn’t mean the whole world needed to see it.

            “Wait,” said Sir Stephen.  “I told you to ask the lady from the ten o’clock news whether she spoke to Dr. Wilson!”

            DI Carter hesitated, then turned to face the reporter.  “Inverness Police Department,” she said, showing her badge.  “Did you ring Dr. Wilson’s mobile about an hour ago?”

            “Did I… no,” said Kirkland, visibly puzzled by the question and evidently shocked by Wilson’s rude dismissal of her.

            “You didn’t ask for an interview with the River Ness John Doe?” DI Carter insisted.

            “The Riv… oh, from the Pierce disappearance?” asked Kirkland.  “I’m not even on that story.”

            “Would you swear to it in court?” Carter insisted.

            “Absolutely,” Kirkland said.  “On a stack of Bibles.”

            Sir Stephen gave a satisfied nod.  “As I told you,” he said, “it was sorcery.”

            “Sorcery?” asked Kirkland.  “What do you…”

            “He has a head injury,” Carter cut her off.  “We’re taking him to the doctor now.”  She grabbed the arm Dr. Wilson wasn’t already holding, and the two of them dragged Sir Stephen over towards the waiting ambulance.


	4. Art and Monsters

            Nobody told the waiting paramedics about Sir Stephen’s bullet and axe wounds, or the fact that he’d nearly drowned not twenty-four hours earlier.  There was no verbal agreement not to, but Nat, Wilson, ,and Carter all seemed to be waiting to see if the medics would be able to find the older injuries for themselves.  They didn’t – or at least, if they did, they didn’t appear to think they were serious.  Instead, they behaved as if they assumed Sir Stephen had been almost ready for discharge at the time of the collapse, and accordingly pronounced him ready to go.

            “You’re as healthy as a horse,” one of them said, clapping Sir Stephen on the shoulder.

            “Thoroughbred,” murmured one of the women.  Her co-worker, standing next to her, giggled.

            The manager of the Kimcraigan Bed and Breakfast, just across the street, congratulated them on escaping the disaster and offered the four rooms free of charge.  None of them really wanted to spend the night at Lochend, but they accepted anyway for the simple reason that none of them had a car anymore.  Nat, Carter, and Wilson had all been parked at the hospital, and their vehicles were presumably now buried in the rubble.  The hotel wold provide them a place to wait for somebody to pick them up.

            They settled down in the hotel’s common room, which was a comfortable if rather spartan space with white walls, a blue plaid rug, and furniture in half a dozen different styles.  There, Dr. Wilson called his mother to assure her he was all right, then a number of other people for the same reason.  DI Carter called her family, and then texted her colleagues to find out if they’d learned anything about the case while she was busy fleeing for her life.  Natasha Dundee University and left a message to tell them she might be gone for a couple more days.

            Meanwhile Sir Stephen washed up and got dressed, in clothes that had apparently once belonged to the manager’s son – blue jeans and a t-shirt with the Irn Bru logo on it.  While everybody else made telephone calls, he’d asked for a meal, and was now working his way through a big plate of bangers and mash.

            “I swear that man’s had six dinners today and he’s _still hungry_ ,” DI Carter observed.  She’d put her phone down now, and was sipping her tea while shaking her head in amazement.

            “Well, the rate he heals suggests he has a hell of a metabolism,” said Dr. Wilson.  “He did warn us he eats a lot.”

            Natasha made a mental note never to let Sir Stephen _near_ Irn Bru or anything else that billed itself as an energy drink – he’d probably rev up and then crash again within five minutes.  “What do you think this all _means_?” she asked the others.  “We’ve heard what _he_ thinks is happening, so _could_ it have been Zola who called, or somebody who works for him?  I mean, _somebody_ is obviously trying to kill him, and Zola already expressed interest…”

            “No,” DI Carter interrupted, “somebody’s trying to kill _people_.  I’m not going to start believing in magic just because a building falls down, any more than I’m going to believe in the Loch Ness Monster because somebody has a seal in the back of his lorry.”  Her mobile beeped and she pulled it out again to look at the screen, and then her face lit up.  “Oh, good!” she said.

            “What is it?” asked Dr. Wilson, leaning in to see.

            “Somebody’s found the guy who made the statues,” said Carter.

            Nat shut her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.  Some part of her _had_ almost wanted to believe that Sir Stephen really was a medieval knight, turned to stone and now restored.  It didn’t matter that there was no historical record of him or that he didn’t speak the right kind of English.  It would just have been so _romantic_ , and she wouldn’t have had to worry anymore about whether it made sense.  Who needed sense when there was magic involved?  Finding out that the statues really were not only modern, but made within the last few months, was both a vindication and an odd disappointment.

            “Well?” she asked Carter.  “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

            “You know, technically you guys are just witnesses, and I shouldn’t be sharing this with you,” Carter said, but she scrolled down the email she’d received until she found the name.  “They were made by a guy named Aaron Apple.  He makes posh garden ornaments out of a workshop on Perth Road in Dundee.”

            Nat let that sink in, and mix of emotions she’d been feeling faded away into a startled annoyance.  “Are you telling me,” she asked, “that the whole time, those two statues were carved literally _across the street_ from where I work?”  For the last several months she’d probably been driving right by the building where Apple was carving them twice a day on her way in and out!

            “Evidently,” said Carter.  “So if we want to find out who Sir Steve really is, I guess we have to ask Aaron Apple.  He’s coming up to Inverness tomorrow to talk to the police about Mr. Pierce’s statues.”

            “I’ll want to be there,” Nat said.  “When he leaves he can give me a ride back to Dundee.”  It was a good excuse for her to hang around and see what happened next – though she also wondered, now, how her insurance company would classify a car buried by a collapsing building.  She’d never checked if her policy covered terrorist acts.  It wasn’t the sort of thing people ever thought would happen to them.  “And you’ll need Sir Steve, obviously,” she added, returning to the point.  If the statues were modern, their best theory for his real identity was still as the model for one.

            Sir Stephen himself scraped the last crumbs off his plate and ate them, then set down his cutlery as if placing a sword on a table.  “I will accompany you back to Inverness,” he said, “but I am nearly well again, and I must gather my allies and resume following the Red Death.  Therefore I must ask for the return of my arms and armor.  Where are they?”

            “They’re being held for safekeeping on Burnett Road,” DI Carter told him.  “If you want to press charges against your assailant, we might need to keep them as evidence.”

            “What does it mean to _press charges_?” Sir Stephen asked.

            Nat wanted to say it referred to ironing the heraldry, but kept her mouth shut.

            “Take him to court,” Carter clarified.  “Have him put in jail, or… what did they do to criminals back then?” she looked at Natasha for the answer.

            “Tick him in the stocks and let people throw fruit at him?” Nat suggested.

            “Oh, I like that,” said Wilson.  “Why don’t we do that anymore?”

            Sir Stephen shook his head.  “If it were truly the Red Death and Zola, I want no such easy fate,” he said.  “I prefer to meet them in single combat.  Why do you say _back then_?  Has it been very long since our last battle?”

            “I don’t think that’s legal,” said Natasha, referring to the idea of judicial combat.  She was still determined not to be drawn into the discussion of date.

            “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Carter said.  “You wouldn’t believe some of the medieval laws that are still on the books in this country?”

            “Like what?” Dr. Wilson asked, interested.  Nat wondered if they, too, were trying to avoid talking about the supposed thousand-year interval, or if the conversation was merely sidetracked.

            “Like if a dead whale, actually contacted the Queen, she just gave it to him,” Carter replied.  “I mean, what’s _she_ going to do with it?”

            A car alarm began going off somewhere outside.  Everybody ignored it, including Sir Stephen, who must have thought the noise couldn’t be very important if nobody else were bothered by it.  “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but my things?”

            “Right, sorry.”  DI Carter pulled her chair closer to the table he was sitting at, so she could explain the process to him.  “If you don’t want it held as evidence, you can get your stuff back by requesting the voucher.  Since you were unconscious when we found you, we’ll have kept that at the station.  They’ll have a list of what we’ve got that’s yours, and all you have to do is ask for it.”

            “Then I must insist on doing that first,” said Sir Stephen.  “I will need them for when I meet the Red Death again.”

            “What makes you so sure it was the Red Death who hurt you?” asked DI Carter.

            Sir Stephen looked as if he thought this were a very stupid question.  “The last thing I recall before waking up in your hospital was doing battle with him,” he said.  When he put it that way, maybe it _was_ stupid.

            The alarm outside was suddenly joined by two or three others, some wailing alarms like the first, and one a repeatedly honking horn.  A siren became audible, drawing closer and closer, and people in the hotel common room were sitting up and looking around.

            “Well, if we’re all going back to the city together,” Dr. Wilson said, “we can…”

            The front door of the Bed and Breakfast flew open and a woman hurried inside.  “Darren!” she shouted.  “The mum’s come back for her bairn!”

            “What?” an Irish accent demanded.  A group of four men had been playing cards at a table under one of the windows.  Now they all jumped to their feet, and Nat recognized one of them – he had bleached hair and a set of wraparound sunglasses pushed up above his forehead.  That was the fellow from the news, who claimed to have captured the monster.  He looked at the woman in the doorway, who nodded, and the monster-hunter panicked.  He shoved his companions out of the way, dashed out the door, and went scurrying up the hill to the car park shouting all the way.  The woman ran after him.

            Nobody else said anything – but nobody in the room, whether tourist, employee, reporter, or man who believed himself to be an eleventh-century knight, wanted to miss whatever was happening outside.  Everybody got up _en masse_ and followed the cryptozoologists to see what was going on.

            The sight that greeted them in the car park was almost beyond belief.  Vehicle lights were flashing and alarms were blaring, and the man in the sunglasses was standing there with an electric torch, yelling and waving it in an attempt to scare away a much larger version of his captive monster.  This animal was the size of a rhinoceros, with a seal-like head on a four-foot neck, broad pectoral flippers and narrow hind ones with no tail.  It was about as close as a marine mammal could get to the dinosaur shape people thought of as the Loch Ness Monster, and it was not at all interested in the chaos around it.  It was halfway up on the cryptozoologist’s truck – which was identifiable by a cartoon of the monster on the side – and rocking the vehicle as if trying to mate with it.

            Nobody said anything.  There was nothing that could possibly be said.

            The creature continued to jerk the truck back and forth until it finally knocked it on its side, and the cage with the baby creature in it rolled out.  The juvenile was now barking excitedly, whether in fear or pain or just calling for its mother, nobody could say.  It continued to make noise as the adult rolled the cage around the car park, pushing vehicles aside and setting off more and more alarms.  Finally the cage broke open, and the young creature inside was free.

            “Stop!  Stop!” the monster-hunter ordered helplessly, but was then forced to dive out of the way as both creatures began flopping back down the slope, south towards the Loch.  If he hadn’t, they would have simply bowled him right over.

            The rest of the people who’d come out of the hotel – and a number of other houses and buildings up and down the shore on both sides – just stood and stared as the two monsters slid down the slope out of sight.  Natasha expected to hear a splash, but if they slipped into the water, they did so silently.  After what seemed like a very long interval in which everyone was simply too stunned to move or speak, people began to shake themselves out of it and head back into the buildings.

            Natasha joined her own party, in the smaller car park outside the hotel.  They hadn’t quite recovered yet.

            “Well,” Dr. Wilson said, licking his lips.  “I guess _that_ happened.”

            Bit by bit, the crowd dispersed.  Darren the cryptozoologist was left sobbing in the car park, with his female friend trying to comfort him.  Nat the others made their slightly wobbly way back inside, and the manager of the Bed and Breakfast, without being asked, offered everybody mugs of his home-made stout.

            “Do you call _that_ evidence of monsters?” Sir Stephen asked DI Carter, with a smug smile.

            “I would say that particular lead has definitely gone _somewhere_ ,” she replied, sipping carefully at the foam on her drink.

            A few minutes later, a car horn honked again.  Everybody jumped, but it only happened the once – and Dr. Wilson smiled.

            “That’ll be my Mum,” he said.  “I wonder if she’s brought the van.”

            Dr. Wilson’s mother was indeed driving a red Dodge Caravan.  When the group went outside to greet her, the vehicle’s front window rolled down to reveal a silver-haired black woman in her sixties, with big chandelier earrings and a face full of laugh lines.  “Sam!” she called out.

            “Hi, Mum!”  He went up to the caravan, and she opened the door so he could lean in and give her a hug.

            “I’m so glad you’re all right,” Mrs. Wilson said.  “I could see all the dust hanging over the city, and then when I realized where it was coming from I nearly had a heart attack right there!”

            “I’m fine, Mum, I’m fine,” he assured her.  “Though I’m thinking about renewing my pilot’s license.”

            “That might be a good idea,” Mrs. Wilson agreed.  “Now, I see you’ve got friends with you, so I’m guessing you’re about to ask if I’ve got room for them.”

            “We would be much obliged,” said Sir Stephen.  “I’m afraid I don’t know what has become of my horse.”

            “Same,” Natasha said, deadpan.

            “Climb in,” Mrs. Wilson said, as if Sam were still a schoolboy and she were giving him and his friends a lift to the store.  “I’m sure it’ll do you all good to sleep in your own beds tonight, and none of you are going to be in much shape to drive after you’ve had such a narrow escape.”

            “Thanks, Mum,” said Wilson.  He climbed in the passenger side next to her, and the others went to get in the back.

            “You’re all still wobbly,” Mrs. Wilson observed.  “That must have been quite the worst shock you’ve ever had.”

            “I don’t know,” said Carter.  “Seeing the Loch Ness Monster try to shag a pickup truck was pretty shocking.”

            Mrs. Wilson frowned for a moment as she tried to figure out what that meant.  When nobody offered any evidence that it was meant to be a joke, she just shrugged and started the van’s engine.  “Well, it’s not every day you see that,” she said. 

* * *

 

            It was no more than a quarter of an hour’s drive from Lochend back up to Inverness on the A82, and for the first part of the trip the road ran along the top of an embankment that plunged down into Loch Dochfour on their right.  Mrs. Wilson kept up a steady stream of chatter about a variety of things, and her son occasionally answered her questions or repeated that no, he was not dating at the moment and was really too busy for a serious relationship right now.  Everybody else just sat staring out their windows at the dark waters of the lake, hoping to see some sign of life.  Natasha didn’t seem so much as a ripple, and if anybody else spotted anything, they didn’t mention it.

            At nearly one in the morning they arrived back in the city, and the group split in two.  Mrs. Wilson dropped her son off at his own flat, and Sir Stephen got out with him.  Nat wondered if they would go to bed right away, or if Sir Stephen would keep Dr. Wilson up even later telling more of the fantastical story of his life.  DI Carter then gave Mrs. Wilson directions to the small house she rented, where the woman let her and Natasha out.

            “Thanks so much for the lift,” Carter said.  “It was lovely meeting you.”

            “You as well, ladies,” Mrs. Wilson replied.  “I don’t know if you were listening, but Sam did say he hasn’t had a girlfriend in about eight months now, and you both seem…”

            “He seems like a nice guy, Mrs. Wilson,” said DI Carter, “but I’m not really looking right now…”

            “Me, either,” Nat agreed.  “Good night.”

            “Good night, dears,” said Mrs. Wilson.

            Natasha had used to be very good at going without sleep, but a few years of trying to live on a normal person’s schedule had undone some of her training.  She was yawning as she and Carter headed indoors.  Nat hadn’t asked if she could spend the night, and Carter hadn’t offered, but it seemed as if both of them simply accepted it was happening.

            “You want anything to eat?” Carter asked.

            “No, thanks.  I’d rather go straight to bed,” Nat replied.

            “Me, too,” Carter admitted.  She pulled the cushions off the sofa, and began folding it out for Nat to sleep on.  “God, I hope we get this all figured out,” she said, possibly to herself.  “Who _is_ this nutter and what has he got to do with Mr. Pierce, what _happened_ to Mr. Pierce and statues and goblins and monsters and… ugh.”  Carter shook her head.  “Usually I want to know what’s going on so that those who deserve it can get justice.  Right now I hope I can figure it out because I’ll be bloody _furious_ if I never get an answer!”

            “Yeah,” said Natasha.  “I hope this Apple guy will be able to tell you.”  If he didn’t, she had no idea who would.  Even if he could tell them who Sir Stephen really was, though, would he know why the statues were so important?  Or who Zola was?  Could he tell them anything about where Pierce was and who or what had destroyed the hospital?  This was not a simple mystery and there would be no simple answers, and for that reason more than any other Natasha was determined to stick around as long as she was allowed to, and maybe a little while longer in secret.  Like Carter, she wanted to _know_ , damnit!

            As Carter started to leave the room, she paused and said, “I guess at some point we _are_ going to have to tell Sir Steve it’s not 1066, aren’t we?”  She sounded as if she, too, had been deliberately avoiding that ridiculous conversation.

            “I guess,” said Nat.  “Or we could just let him keep thinking Scotland is a country of brilliant engineers until he comes out of it for himself.”

            Carter stifled a yawn.  “I don’t think I know which sounds meaner,” she said. 

* * *

 

            In the morning the two women took turns in the shower, and Nat observed that if this mystery wasn’t solved soon, she was going to _have_ to go back to Dundee soon – her toothbrush was there, and while she could wear the same clothes _two_ days in a row, _three_ would be stretching it.  They ate a quick breakfast of toast and eggs, and then Carter rang Dr. Wilson and arranged to meet him and Sir Stephen at the police station.

            Seeing Sir Stephen waiting for them in one of the ugly metal chairs of the police station lobby was a sharp reminder for Natasha of just how weird the last day and a half had been.  He’d shaved off the rest of his beard, and while there was still a bald patch in his hair where they’d sewn up the wound to his face, only the slightest scar remained to tell where the rest of the injury had been.  It didn’t seem possible that this man had gotten _his head split open with an axe_ , never mind that this was just one of _three_ injuries that really ought to have killed him.  He should still be in the ICU.  Instead he set aside the newspaper he’d been looking at and got to his feet to greet the women.  Today he was still wearing the hotel owner’s son’s jeans, and a red and blue Caley Thistle jersey.

            “We have to find another place for this guy to stay,” Dr. Wilson said.  “He ate me out of house and home this morning.”

            “I will repay you tenfold,” Sir Stephen promised.  “You have my word.”

            Dr. Wilson didn’t look like he believed this but he didn’t want to say so.  Instead, he asked, “did you girls sleep well?”

            Nat and Carter exchanged a look, then both said, “yes, fine,” while trying not to yawn.  Yesterday had been much too traumatic for anyone to get a proper night’s sleep.  Dr. Wilson himself had doubtless suffered from the same problem.  The phrase was nothing but a pleasantry.

            “Me, too,” Wilson said, agreeing with what they had not said.  He lowered his voice and added, “he _snores_.  It sounded like Nessie barking in my ear.”

            “Oh, really?”  Nat cocked her head.  “Were you two sharing a bed?”

            “I’ve only got one in my flat,” sighed Dr. Wilson.

            “Is it really so strange to share the host’s bed in your country?” asked Sir Stephen in surprise.  “In England I would not think of insulting a man offering me bed and board by asking him to sleep on the floor.”

            That, at least, was historically accurate, Nat thought.  In the Middle Ages whole families, together with their servants and guests, would have slept in one bed – if they’d had a bed at all.  She wondered how to go about explaining the modern connotations.

            “You hear that?” asked Wilson.  “He’s telling me I’m not even the first man he’s ever shared a bed with!”

            “Scandalous!” said Nat.  She was kind of tempted to keep the conversation going and see how long it lasted before Sir Stephen realized they were making fun of him, but then another policeman came to join them.

            “Carter?” this man asked.  “Mr. Apple from Dundee is already here.  He’s waiting for you.”

            “Oh, good,” DI Carter said.  “Bring him in here first.  It’s time we got to the bottom of this.”

            Aaron Apple was tall and overweight, with a shirt beard, long hair, and dark plastic-rimmed glasses.  The other officer introduced DI Carter, who shook his hand and then had him meet, in turn, Nat, Dr. Wilson, and Sir Stephen.  The point, of course, was to gauge his reaction to Sir Stephen, but there was surprisingly little.  Apple paused briefly with a slight frown, but immediately brightened up again.

            “Pleasure to meet you all,” he said, glancing at Sir Stephen again out of the corner of his eye.

            Nat wondered what that meant.  It couldn’t be that he _recognized_ Sir Stephen, because if the two knew each other Apple would surely have greeted him by name.  Was it the scar, perhaps, that confused him?  Maybe the lack of a beard?  Neither of those things would normally render a person unrecognizable.

            “These are some of the other witnesses I’ve been working with on this case,” DI Carter explained.  “Before we begin the formal interview, I just wanted to know if you recognize any of them?”

            Apple glanced at Sir Stephen again.  “No,” he said hesitantly.  “No, I don’t think I do?”

            “Then why do you keep looking at him like that?” Carter asked.

            He turned a little red as he realized he’d been caught staring.  “Um… well, you’ll think I’m a bit of a numpty, but he looks a lot like that carving I did for Mr. Pierce.  It’s kind of spooky, actually.”

            Nat could see a triumphant smile twitching at the corners of Carter’s lips.  “Can I ask you who was the model for that sculpture?” she asked.

            “A bunch of different people,” Apple said.  “I don’t like basing a piece on a single person unless the customer asks for it.  These things need to have their own personality.”

            Natasha’s hopes, which had been high for a moment, dropped again.  How could _that_ be?  Was Apple lying to protect someone?  Had he based the sculpture on images provided by Mr. Pierce, perhaps?  What he’d just said implied that the answer was no, and he wasn’t showing any of the body language Nat normally looked for to separate truth from lies.  Could Sir Stephen’s resemblance to the statue be nothing but a coincidence?  That seemed absurd.

            She could see that Carter was also disappointed, but all the detective said was, “I see.  In that case, if you could come with me, Mr. Apple, I need you to tell me about your working relationship with Mr. Pierce.”

            Carter started to lead Apple away, but Sir Stephen put out a hand to call them back.  “Madame!” he said.  “My things!”

            “Talk to the guy at the desk,” said DI Carter, pointing him in the right direction.  The man there waved.

            “I’ll help you with it,” Nat offered, as Carter escorted Apple into one of the interrogation rooms.

            “I don’t need help,” said Sir Stephen firmly.  He approached the desk, where another uniformed officer was waiting for him.  This was quite a young-looking man with sandy brown hair and freckles, who was trying to grow a mustache in order to offset his boyish features.  It wasn’t quite working.  The name embroidered on his pocket was _Lipscomb_.

            “Safekeeping?” Officer Lipscomb asked, taking a binder out from under the desk.

            “My arms and armor were taken when I was pulled from the river,” Sir Stephen explained.  “I would like to have them back.”

            “Oh, you’re the River John Doe!” Lipscomb exclaimed, excited.  “I’ve seen some good re-enactors but your stuff was _tremendous_!”  He opened the binder and found pink and white copies of a form.  “Let’s see… first we have to make sure we’ve got it all.  Procedure.  It says, uh… it says _replica sword, eighty cm blade.  Replica medieval dagger, twenty cm blade.  Knee-length chainmail shirt.  Replica Saxon helmet…_ ”

            “What of my shield?” asked Sir Stephen.

            Lipscomb’s eyes flickered down the list to the bottom.  “We need to keep that,” he said.  “It’s evidence.”

            “You cannot!” Sir Stephen protested.  “What is it evidence of?”

            “Of whatever happened to Mr. Pierce,” the man explained.  “There was blood on the shield, so it was sent with other stuff from the scene for DNA testing.”

            “What in Saint Augustine’s name is _dienay_?” Sir Stephen asked.  “I demand the return of my shield!  It was given to me by the Lady of the Lake, to use in service of King Harold of England!”

            Lipscomb stared at him, then looked past him at Nat and Dr. Wilson, his eyes begging for help.

            “You’re gonna have to let it go for now,” Wilson told Sir Stephen.

            “I can’t simply _let it go_ ,” Sir Stephen said.  “What is a warrior without his shield?”

            “An appetizer?” Nat suggested.

            Dr. Wilson patted him on the shoulder.  “He’ll just take the rest of the stuff for now,” he told Lipscomb.

            The young cop jumped to his feet.  “I’ll go get it!” he said, seizing the opportunity to get away from this unnerving character.  He disappeared through a door behind his desk.

            Wilson sighed.  “Sir Steve,” he said, in the same firm, doctor-to-patient tone he’d used yesterday while explaining to the man that he was in the hospital, “you asked what DNA is.  If there’s blood on your shield, then there’s tests they can do to figure out whose blood it is.  If it’s Mr. Pierce’s, or if it belongs to whoever kidnapped or killed him, then the blood is evidence and they’ll need to keep it until the end of the trial, whenever that is.”

            “I can’t wait for a trial,” Sir Stephen insisted.  “The longer I tarry here, the further ahead of me the Red Death can fly!  There must be a hundred men’s blood on that shield, including my own.”  He turned to Natasha.  “Do you still wish to help me?  I would trade you all my other possessions, including my sword and my steed, to have that shield back on my arm.”

            Nat shrugged.  “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said.  "It’s the law – the police need to keep your stuff as evidence and there isn’t really anything you can do about it.”  She _could_ break in to their evidence locker and get it back, but she wouldn’t, because that would have other consequences.

            “Then I shall have to appeal directly to the monarch,” Sir Stephen decided.

            She could just picture it – Sir Stephen marching into Buckingham Palace, kneeling before the Queen as she tried to have a nice cup of tea, and beseeching her to make the Scottish police give him back his shield.  “Um, no,” she said, glancing at Dr. Wilson.  His horrified expression suggested that he was imagining the same thing.  “You can’t... that wouldn’t even work.  The Queen can’t just _tell_ them to give it back.  Even if she did, they wouldn’t necessarily have to do it.”

            “Then what is the use of having a queen?” Sir Stephen asked.

            “We try not to ask ourselves that,” said Dr. Wilson.

            From somewhere on the other side of the nearest wall came a sudden, high-pitched yelp.

            Nat, Sir Stephen, and Dr. Wilson all turned their heads to look in the direction the sound had come from.  There was the door Lipscomb had vanished through, a bulletin board with various things posted on it, including a couple of lost dog flyers and a notice about a team-building picnic, and a security camera that didn’t look as if it were actually plugged in to anything.  The tiny window in the door did not show anything but an empty hallway.  The cry sounded like it had come from a couple of rooms away.

            Maybe nothing terrible had happened.  Maybe Lipscomb had just stubbed his toe, or dropped Sir Stephen’s helmet on his foot or something.  After what she’d seen during the past twenty-four hours, however, Nat didn’t feel like she could take anything for granted.

            “Hello!” she called out.  “Everything okay back there?”

            There was no answer.  Other people in the lobby seemed unconcerned by the sound, but they hadn’t lived through what Nat had.  She decided to take a look.

            Wary, she opened the gate that divided the space behind the desk from in front, and tried the door.  It was locked, naturally.  She pulled a paperclip out of her pocket and picked the lock, then eased the door open to look around.

            Nobody seemed to be in the hallway, but a door on the right was open.  Nat crept up to it and peeked through.  The room beyond seemed to be devoted to filing and evidence, but all the lockers had been opened and the boxes and bags on the shelves had been emptied, their contents strewn around the room.  There was clothing, firearms, jewelry, car parts, and all sorts of other things that must have been taken from crime scenes or people who’d been arrested.

            Much of this mess was lying in and around a shockingly large pool of blood, and standing in the middle of it was the man called Zola, holding up an eleventh-century helmet with a noseguard.  It could only be Sir Stephen’s.  Zola was dressed in black again, which made it difficult to see whether there was blood on his clothing, but his hands and face were both smeared with red.  Without noticing Nat, he scowled at the helmet, tossed it aside, and continued sorting through the wreckage.

            He was here for the same reason Sir Stephen was, she thought.  He was looking for the shield.


	5. The Shield Thief

            “Are you looking for the shield?” Natasha asked.

            Zola had been so intent on his search of the locker room that he hadn’t noticed her.  Now he looked up sharply, and she took advantage of his surprise to put her elbow squarely in his gut.  The odd little man staggered backwards and slipped on the blood.  Nat stepped over the mess, grabbed him by the lapels, and slammed him against the row of lockers.

            “What is going on?” she demanded.  “Who are you?  Where is Mr. Pierce?”

            Despite being pinned to a wall with his feet six inches above the ground, Zola smirked at her.  “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said.  “We’ll have the map, and then we’ll have the Grail.”

            “Tell me the _truth_!” Natasha ordered.  No more of this romantic pseudo-medieval bullshit.

            “Truth?”  Zola sneered.  “What’s that?  A _historian_ of all people should know that _truth_ is whatever the winners want it to be!”

            “What is going on in here?” demanded the voice of DI Carter.

            So far, Nat had been able to tell herself that there was an explanation for every strange thing that had happened over the past few days, even if those explanation didn’t mesh very well with reality _or_ with each other.  Sir Stephen thought he was a medieval knight because he had a brain injury.  His accelerated healing might just be a biological fluke.  The hospital had been bombed by terrorists.  The Loch Ness Monster was just an animal nobody had ever captured before.  There was no rational explanation, however, for what happened next: Zola looked over her shoulder as DI Carter entered the room, and then transformed _before Nat’s eyes_ into a duplicate of herself, exact to the last detail – red hair, Sherpa jacket, Lipsy ankle boots, and all.

            Very little could really shock Nat into immobility, but that managed it.  And while she was still staring, the double looked over her shoulder as DI Carter entered the room and called out, “Sharon!  Help!”

            When Nat glanced back, Carter was standing still as a stone in the doorway, mouth open in surprise at seeing two of Natasha.  Nat was still trying to figure out what to say when her doppelgänger raised its legs and drove both feet into her stomach, throwing her backwards.  She landed on a heap of books and somebody’s broken spare tyre.  It was not a soft place to fall, although it did keep her head from bouncing off the concrete floor.

            The imposter jumped over her fallen body, skidded on the blood again, and grabbed Carter’s arm.  “It’s Zola!” the creature said, imitating Natasha’s voice as well as her face.  “He’s looking for Sir Stephen’s shield.  Where is it?  We have to keep it safe!”

            Nat picked herself up.  “That’s not… that’s not me…” this was ridiculous, something out of a movie or a troubadour’s poem.  It couldn’t really be happened.

            “Don’t listen to him,” the imposter pleaded.  Carter just looked from one to the other and back again, still trying to figure out what she was seeing.

            Nat thought fast.  “Carter,” she said.  “Call Sir Steve.”  Carter would know that they weren’t on a first name basis, and that they’d all taken to calling Sir Stephen by the nickname Dr. Wilson had given him.

            It took a moment, but then Carter got it.  She took the imposter’s wrist and bent it backwards, causing a squeak of pain.  Natasha ran up and grabbed the thing from behind, putting a hand over its mouth.

            Zola responded by biting her – and suddenly it _was_ Zola again, with his unnaturally sharp teeth.  Nat bit her lip and did not shout, though he bit hard enough to draw blood.  She moved her hand from his mouth to his neck, intending to choke him.  As she did, her thumb caught on something hanging on a slender metal chain inside his collar.  On instinct she closed her fingers around it, and then Zola himself simply melted away, leaving the two women standing there holding on to thin air.

            For a moment all either could do was stand there, their hands still where they’d been clutching a man who was now utterly vanished.  There was no possible explanation for what they’d just seen.  If it wasn’t magic, then there was nothing else to call it.

            “What the hell happened?” asked a voice.

            Nat and Carter looked up, and found that Dr. Wilson and Sir Stephen – along with a number of police officers and station staff – had come to see what everybody was shouting about.  Their expressions were confused and cautious, but there was none of the terror and uncertainty that the two women were sharing.  None of them had seen what had just happened, and surely none of them would believe it if told about it… except, of course, for Sir Stephen.  A man who believed he was a medieval knight might believe anything.

            They were going to have to say _something_ , though, because a dozen people were now crowded into the hallway waiting for an answer.

            “Um.”  Nat licked her lips.  “I’m gonna have to go with _act of sorcery_.”  She looed down at the object she’d pulled off Zola’s neck.  It was a little iron pendant in the shape of what heralds called an ‘ordinary cross’, with a single small lump of gold soldered to the centre.  The verdigris on it suggested it was old, but it didn’t belong to any period Nat could identify.

            DI Carter had finally shaken herself out of her astonishment enough to look past Nat, and her eyes went wide.  “Whose blood is that?” she asked, pointing to the mess.

            “It was here when I got here,” said Nat, and almost laughed when she realized that this was the first time she’d ever been discovered in the same room as a pool of blood she _hadn’t_ been the cause of.  Fortunately, she managed to control the urge, and added, “I think it might be Officer Lipscomb’s.  He went to go get Sir Steve’s stuff, while we tried to explain to him why he couldn’t have his shield back.”

            “Is my shield here?” Sir Stephen asked urgently.

            “I don’t think so,” said Nat.  “I’m sure Zola was looking for it, and if it were here with the rest of your stuff he’d have taken it.  What’s so important about it?”

            “The shield is my property!” Sir Stephen huffed.  “I want it back!”

            “I know _that_ ,” said Nat.  “Why does _Zola_ want it?  Is it actually magical?”  At this point, she was prepared to believe whatever somebody told her.  Statues come to life?  Sure.  Magical shield?  Okay!  The Loch Ness Monster?  Why not?

            More police officers were gathering, staring at the mess in the room and taking in the sheer quantity of blood present.  Nat remembered having been told that the average person’s blood volume was five and a half litres – this looked like just about all of it.  Nobody actually went in, though, and while a few people turned away or went to do something else that would hopefully involve dealing with the situation somehow, most just stood there until an authority figure arrived.

            When one did, it was in the form of a brawny middle-aged man with steel-gray hair and a bristly mustache.  He pushed his way to the front of the crowd, saw the mess, and stopped.

            “What the bloody blazes went on in here?” he demanded.  “Why are you fannybaws all standing around gawking?  We need to seal off this room!  Get crime scene in here, now!”

            That seemed to be the impetus the stunned officers needed.  The crowd broke up in a chorus of muttered apologies, and DI Carter took the opportunity to escort Nat, Dr. Wilson, and Sir Stephen away from the scene.  Nat wanted to roll her eyes at the behaviour of the police – dealing with crime scenes was supposed to be their _job_.  Then again, they probably weren’t used to crime scenes just appearing in their midst in their own workplace, the way this one had.

            Carter shuffled everybody into the same bare little room where she’d questioned Natasha the previous morning, which honestly seemed like it must have been several weeks ago at least.  The entire world had turned upside-down since just this morning!  The artist, Aaron Apple, was still sitting in a chair there, looking worried and drumming his fingers on his leg.  He looked up hopefully when they came in.

            “Do you still need me, Inspector?” he asked.

            Carter thought about it for a moment, then shook her head.  “No.  You can go.”

            Apple heaved a sigh of relief, and go tot his feet and left without bothering to say goodbye.  Carter shut the door behind him, then slumped into one of the folding metal chairs.  Its legs made an unhappy squeaking sound as they scraped across the concrete floor.

            “Okay,” Carter said aloud.  “Okay, so this is really happening, with the monsters and the goblin and everything.”  It was mostly herself she was trying to convince, and the tremor in her voice suggested she wasn’t quite succeeding.

            “I fear it is,” Sir Stephen said gravely.  “As I warned you, the fact that you do not _believe_ something does not make it untrue.”

            “That’s exactly what I normally try to avoid,” Carter agreed, “but I followed the lead, and it went… yeah.”  She took a deep breath, and reached to pick up the recorder she’d left on the table.  This, too, was probably the same one she’d used during her interview with Nat.  Carter chose a random place in the recording, and tapped the _play_ button.  Apple’s voice, distant and tinny, played back.

            _Mr. Pierce was very specific about what he wanted_ , he said.  _Two knights in battle, and he gave me the heraldry, the weapons, and so forth.  I was actually doing research about the armor when I came across the story about Sir Stephen and the Red Death, and realized that’s what he was referring to.  He wanted to make them look like they’d been at the bottom of the sea for a thousand years, but I didn’t have any barnacles so I just aged them a little with wax and sandpaper and let it go at that._

            _Did he tell you what they were for?_ asked Carter’s own voice.

            _I assumed they were for decoration.  I mean, that’s what I do._

            Carter turned the recorder off and looked up at the others, as if begging somebody to explain.

            “So he delivered the statues to Pierce,” Natasha said, “and Pierce called me to see if they would fool an expert – which they didn’t, because he got the armor and weapons right but didn’t use the correct materials or style.  I guess that must not have mattered to Zola, though, because he showed up, killed Pierce, and… and used his magic to bring the statues to life?  I don’t know.  Is that something magic can do?”  Nat knew at least a little bit about a lot of things, but magic was new to her.

            “I am not a statue,” said Sir Stephen, standing behind Carter’s chair.

            “Hypothetically, then,” said Natasha.  “ _Is_ that something magic can do?”

            “Magic cannot create life,” Sir Stephen replied, “only an illusion of it.  And I,” he slapped a hand on the tabletop to emphasize the point, “am no illusion.”

            Nat wasn’t so sure about that.  “Just… humour me for a moment here,” she said.  “I can see why Zola would want the Red Death.  You said the Red Death was his master.”  Knowing that _both_ statues were missing, and Sir Stephen was flesh and blood and wandering around, it seemed natural than the Red Death would be, too.  “Why would he bring _you_ back, too?  He’s tried to kill you twice.  Why not just leave you as a rock and go home?  Is it for the shield?”

            This must be something Sir Stephen didn’t want to talk about.  He scowled, then looked around to make sure nobody was watching or listening but the people he knew.  Nat wondered what he would have done if he’d known what the security camera in the corner was.

            “He needs the map,” Sir Stephen said finally.  “I had that.”

            “Map?” Carter asked.

            “The one Sir James Buckeye retrieved, before plummeting to his head in the fjord,” Dr. Wilson added helpfully.

            “What?”  Carter blinked at him.

            “And you asked me why I was listening!” Wilson snorted.

            “The map was engraved in the stone of a ring,” Sir Stephen explained.  “I packed it in unspun wool and secreted it behind the boss of my shield.”

            “Ah, _that’s_ why they wanted you.”  Nat nodded.  “To get the map back.  Zola mentioned a map.”

            “But magic cannot create life,” Sir Stephen repeated, annoyed by the idea.  “They could not have made me out of a statue, nor could they have made the Red Death from one!”

            Nat thought about that.  “Could the Grail do it?” she asked.  It was supposed to have some kind of powers, surely.

            “I do not know what the Grail is capable of,” Sir Stephen said, “but if they already possessed it, we would know.  We must find my shield before they do.  Where is it?”

            Carter sighed.  “It needed DNA testing.  We send that stuff to Dr. Hughes at the Centre for Ana…”

            “The Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at Dundee University!” Nat groaned.  “Of course you do!  That’s the obvious place!  Why did I bother coming here?” she asked of the universe in general.  “If I’d stayed home I would probably know _more_ about what’s going on!”

            “Then I must go to Dundee,” Sir Stephen decided.

            “Does that mean we’re on a quest?” asked Dr. Wilson.  He was trying to be serious, but his eager voice and bright eyes betrayed him.  It wasn’t that he found the idea funny.  On the contrary, he _loved_ the idea of going on a quest with a knight, and he couldn’t hide it.

            “It means I continue _my_ quest, and you may come with me, if you like,” said Sir Stephen.  “Be warned, though, that the road shall be long and perilous.  I would prefer to find my own allies and regroup, but with so little time to do so, I shall take whatever help is offered me.”

            “Well, _I_ still have to find out what happened to Mr. Pierce,” said Carter, “so if the shield is important to that, I’m your new ally whether you want me or not.”

            “I’m coming,” said Wilson firmly.

            “What of you, Doctor Jones?” Sir Stephen asked Nat.

            Wilson might as well come, Nat thought – with the hospital destroyed it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.  What was _Nat’s_ excuse going to be?  “When you say your _allies_ ,” she said, “do you mean… people like the guy who thought all his problems were caused by wizards?”

            “Sir Francis,” said Dr. Wilson.  “Him, or Sir Timothy the Drunkard, or the Moor of Many Tongues?”

            “Yes, my companions through my trials so far,” said Sir Stephen.  “They all swore to help me in defeating the Red Death, and I am sure they would like to see the death of Sir James Buckeye avenged, for he was their friend and companion as well.  Perhaps our paths will cross on the way, for they, too, have doubtless continued their mission, but I don’t think I can afford to stop and seek them out.”

            That was the answer Nat had been afraid of.  Now that they realized Sir Stephen _wasn’t_ just a man with a head injury, it was time for that corny conversation she hadn’t wanted to have yesterday.

            “Uh, Sir Steve?” asked Dr. Wilson.  “Where do you think you are?”

            Sir Stephen frowned.  “I am in Scotland,” he said.  “Is that not what you told me?  I understand that I have been unconscious or imprisoned for some time, maybe several years.”

            If Natasha remembered correctly, Rogsey Abbey was supposed to have been somewhere in the southwest, near the coast of Cornwall.  Sir Stephen had probably never been to Scotland in his life, so why _shouldn’t_ it be a country of monsters and weird machines and people who talked funny?  Nat spent a few moments trying to figure out how to break it gently, and then decided there was no way to do so.

            “Sir Stephen,” she said, “um.  Look, we didn’t want to tell you this, but… this stuff you’ve been talking about, your quest and all that.  That was… uh…”  She took a deep breath.  “That was almost a thousand years ago.”

            Sir Stephen had looked like he was bracing himself for a large number, but he was in no way prepared to hear _that_.  The face he made was as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach.  “A _thousand_?”

            “Yeah,” said Natasha.  “You’re about as far away from your own time as your time was to the Emperor Claudius conquering Britain.”

            Sir Stephen looked at DI Carter, who nodded.  He then tried Dr. Wilson, who replied with an awkward shrug.

            “Around about,” Wilson agreed.

            “We don’t know if they actually did manage to make you out of a statue, or if you were turned to stone and then they changed you back,” Natasha said.  There was a weird thought – _had_ Pierce actually found two stone knights on the sea floor, and had replicas made for some reason?  But if Sir Stephen and the Red Death were historical characters, then why weren’t they in contemporary chronicles?  Why did Sir Stephen speak modern English?  “But yeah, not quite a thousand years.”

            Sir Stephen’s only immediate reaction was to stand there looking stunned.  As he was still trying to digest this revelation, Natasha realized that he was going to want to know how the political situation he remembered had resolved itself – and that he wasn’t going to like the answer.  Whether just to get all the shocks over with at once or to spare herself another ridiculous conversation like this later, she wasn’t sure, but she decided to just lay it on him.  “King Harold fought Duke William at Hastings and lost.  The story goes that he died of an arrow in the eye, but nobody knows for sure.  William became King William, Willian the Conqueror, and the current Queen is his descendant.”

            Poor Sir Stephen, she thought.  Everything he was familiar with was gone, and everything he’d fought to save had been destroyed by his enemies.

            “That cannot be true,” Sir Stephen protested.  “Are you testing me?”

            “No, that’s why we’ve got all those machines,” said Dr. Wilson.  “Like the cars and the mobile phones.  It’s not just a Scotland thing, we’ve had a thousand years to figure out how to build them.”

            “But…”  Sir Stephen looked to the left and right as if seeking an escape route, but they were all together in the same little cinder block room.  “Where is his tomb?” he asked.

            “Whose?” Nat wanted to know, then realized who Sir Stephen must be talking about.  “King Harold’s?”

            “Yes,” Sir Stephen said.  “If my King is dead and his land ruled by his enemies, the least I can do is pay my respects and apologize for failing him.”

            Natasha had already had to deliver two pieces of news that Sir Stephen found unimaginably horrible.  She didn’t want to have to do it a _third_ time, but Wilson and Carter were both looking at her expectantly.  Were either of _them_ familiar with the controversy?  Probably not.

            “He doesn’t have one,” she said.  “We don’t even know for sure where he’s buried.  William of Poitiers’ account has been interpreted to suggest it was near his birthplace, at Bosham, but there's also a legend in Essex that he's buried at Waltham Abbey.  There's no proper _tomb_ in either place.  If there were, then we wouldn't have to rely on stories and chroniclers.”

            Sir Stephen swayed a bit.

            “You’d better sit down,” Dr. Wilson suggested.  He dragged a chair over for Sir Stephen, who collapsed into it with his face in his hands.  Wilson urged him to bend down further.  “Head between your knees.  It’ll help get blood to your brain.”

            Nat moved towards the door.  “I… uh… let’s give him some time,” she suggested.  Would any of this have been easier for Sir Stephen to cope with if they’d told him right away when he first asked?  No, probably not.

            “Yeah.”  Dr. Wilson patted Sir Stephen’s back a couple of times, then straightened up.  “Good idea.”

            Sir Stephen sat up.  “Don’t leave me alone,” he said, holding out a hand.

            The other’s hesitated, then DI Carter took the man’s hand and sat back down next to him.  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.  “I’ve been pretty miserable to you this entire time.  Even if you _had_ just been making u stories, you deserve better than that.  My job is to get to the truth, and I’m gonna get to the truth about this whole Grail thing even if it kills me, okay?  I promise.”

            “Thank you,” said Sir Stephen.

            Nat and Wilson stepped out, and shut the door softly behind themselves.

            It had only been a few minutes since the chief had stepped in and told everybody to get moving, but the police had taken his orders to heart.  The station was now positively boiling with activity as people sketched and photographed the evidence room, or checked items off lists to see if anything had been stolen.  Natasha and Wilson wound their way through the crowd with murmurs of _excuse me_ and _beep beep_.  After what seemed like miles, with the constant fear that somebody would stop them and tell them they were witnesses and could not leave, they reached the doors and stepped out into the car park.

            It was pretty busy outside, too.  More police cars were pulling up, and people who worked elsewhere on the street were wandering over to see if they could figure out what all the fuss was about, peeking in through the gate or trying to see over the outside wall.  It was a breath of fresh air after the chaos _inside_ , though, and Nat and Wilson sat down on the hood of somebody’s car for a moment and just stared at the sky, trying to let the stress out of their bodies.

            “So now what?” asked Dr. Wilson.  “Now we’ve gotta go on a quest?”  Once again, he _almost_ smiled before getting control of his face.

            “What, so you _don’t_ think that’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?” asked Nat.

            Wilson chuckled nervously.  “I gotta admit, this _is_ what I fantasized about when I was a kid.  That’s not the same as having to do it in real life, though.  In the fantasy versions I _knew_ I would always manage to save the day.”

            “Well, we don’t _have_ to,” Nat said, but she couldn’t help thinking it would be very selfish not to.  They were too deeply involved to just leave now – Dr. Wilson, DI Carter, and Natasha herself were the only people who really _could_ help Sir Stephen, because they were the only ones who’d seen with their own eyes that he wasn’t just a nut.  If all of this were real, then the Grail was a very dangerous object no matter what century it was, and a man who’d done the terrible things legends attributed to Johann Totenkoph should not be allowed to have it.  “You want to stay home?” she asked.  It wasn’t sarcasm.  If Dr. Wilson honestly didn’t want to do this, she wouldn’t force him.

            “Hell, no,” said Dr. Wilson, and this time he let himself smile a little instead of trying to suppress it.  “Eight-year-old me would travel through time to strangle me.”

            “And we can’t have that,” said Nat, although she wasn’t entirely sure it was a joke.  In a world that had gone as mad as this, _could_ that happen?  “Why don’t you find us a car so we can go back to Dundee?  I’m gonna call Dr. Hughes about the shield, and then I’ll see if I can find a copy of _The Romance of Sir Stephen and Totenkopf_.”  Maybe the original chivalric poem could shed some light on the situation.

            Dr. Wilson snorted.  “That makes it sound like a love story.”

            The level of activity in the car park made it a loud place to try to talk on the phone.  The two of them therefore separated, and set off in search of some peace and quiet.  Nat crossed the street to a weedy overgrown lot with a little cinder block building in the corner of it.  The building itself was clearly unsafe, but if she sat down on a fallen block behind it, its bulk blocked out most of the traffic noise.  She pulled out her phone.

            Her first call was to a local library, to see if she could find an audio copy of the medieval poem.  While waiting for the librarian to track it down, Nat reached into her purse for a pen, but her fingers found something else – the crude little pendant she’d grabbed from Zola the moment before he vanished.  Maybe while they were at Dundee she could have somebody take a look at this, too, she thought.  It didn’t look medieval to her, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t… maybe it was just an example of something too rare for her to have encountered before.

            “Is this the one?” the librarian’s voice asked, interrupting her thoughts.  “ _Sir Stephen and the Red Death_ , author unknown, based on Fisher’s 1941 edition?  It’s read by the late Sir Richard Attenborough.”

            “Is that the only one you have?” asked Nat.  Mid-century academic writing tended to be tedious, and the thought of spending an hour in a car listening to it being read out in a stuffy reserved accent made her feel as if she were already falling asleep.  Then again, _The Romance of Sir Stephen and Totenkopf_ wasn’t exactly _Le Mort D’Arthur_ or _The Canterbury Tales_.  She should probably be gratefuls they had an audio edition at all.  “Never mind, I’ll take it,” she said.  “What’s your address?”  She wound the broken chain of the pendant around her wrist, clutching the object in her last three fingers so she could write with the first two.

            With the poem secured, Nat’s next call was to Sue in the Faculty of Archaeology office.  She’d expected the usual polite greeting.  Instead, for the first time Nat could remember, she got to hear Sue take the Lord’s name in vain.

            “Christ, Natalie!” Sue exclaimed.  “I’m so glad you rang!  I’ve been worried to death about you.  First there was the hospital bombing and apparently there really _are_ monsters in the Loch and people are patrolling the banks with guns!  I think the whole country’s gone mad.  Are you all right?”

            “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Nat assured her.  “I’m nowhere near any of that right now.”  Not technically a lie, and surely among the smaller and whiter examples if it were.  “I’m heading back to Dundee today,” she went on, as if this were for totally normal reasons instead of a trashy fantasy novel coming to life.  “Can you do me a favour?”

            “Of course,” said Sue.

            “Can you find me a personal number for Dr. Hughes in AHI?” Nat asked.  “I’ve got something to tell her but it’s kind of private, so I don’t want to leave a message in her office.”  Not where there was a ghost of a chance somebody else might hear it.

            “I’ll take a look at the faculty telephone book,” said Sue.  There was a soft _swish_ of paper moving past paper as she pulled it out.  “Speaking of messages,” Sue added, pages turning in the background, “I’m sorry if you left me one about this already and I just missed it somehow, but is your father coming to the faculty dinner this weekend?”

            Nat groaned to herself.  It would have been so much easier, she thought, to tell people that _both_ her imaginary parents were dead, but having one still alive was such an easy excuse if she ever needed to run off for some reason.  The biography she’d put together for ‘Natalie Jones’ stated that her mother had died of cancer when she was a teenager, but her father was still living in Manhasset, New York.  If her past someday caught up with her, she would simply tell her co-workers that Allen Jones had suffered a heart attack or stroke and she was flying back to the States to be with him.  By the time they began to worry about her, she would be gone without a trace.

            The Atlantic Ocean was normally a good excuse for why no-one had ever _met_ Natasha’s father, but every so often something like this came up.  “I invited him,” Nat lied, “but he’s got a car club thing this weekend.”

            Sue clucked her tongue.  “Is that more important than his daughter?  He can’t have seen you in ages!”

            “I visited him last Christmas, remember?” said Nat.  “He doesn’t have the money to do a lot of… ow!” she exclaimed, as it suddenly felt like an electric shock in the fingers of her right hand.  She quickly dropped Zola’s pendant and looked at her palm, but the skin was undamaged.  What had _that_ been?

            “What happened?” asked Sue.

            “I’m fine,” Natasha told her.  “Just a papercut.”  She scooped the pendant up again and tucked it back in her purse.

            “Okay,” said Sue.  “Here’s Dr. Hughes’ number.”

            Nat copied it down on the edge of a receipt, next to where she’d written the address of the Inverness Public Library.  She thanked Sue and promised to see her in a couple of hours, then went on to make her third phone call.  As she did, she heard a crunch, as if of feet on gravel.  Quickly, she looked up, but there was nobody there.

            A normal person would have dismissed it as wind or imagination, but Nat was not normal, and it hadn’t yet been an hour since she’d seen a human being – or at least, a human- _shaped_ being – vanish right out of her hands.  Maybe it was nothing, but maybe it wasn’t.  She got up and walked around the building to check.

            There was nobody there.  Of course there wasn’t.  Nat didn’t know if she ought to feel relieved, satisfied, or silly.  Nor did she know what to feel about the sudden urge to check her purse and make sure Zola’s pendant was still in there.  It was, and she pulled it out and slipped it into her jacket’s inside pocket instead.  Something told her the pendant was important, and if its owner realized it was missing, he was liable to come back for it.


	6. The Quest Begins

            Nat rang Dr. Hughes next, and got voicemail.  She left a message with a not- _entirely_ -untrue story about how she was working with the police on the case involving the shield and would be dropping by to have a look at it.  It probably wouldn’t stand up to much deep thought, but it was definitely preferable to telling a complete stranger that they were looking for a map to the Holy Grail and had to get to it before a shapeshifting hobgoblin could.  The pendant in her pocket did not shock her again, and the first shock didn’t seem to have done anything.  Maybe it really had been just static electricity.

            She returned to the police station, and found Dr. Wilson still out in the car park, leaning on a wall and looking at his watch impatiently.

            “You all done?” he asked when he saw Nat coming.

            “Yeah,” she said.  “You got us a car?”

            “The guy should be dropping it off any minute,” Wilson said.  “So no, we won’t need my Mum to drive us to Dundee.”

            “Good to know,” Nat agreed with a smile.  “You know, when she dropped me and Carter off she asked us…”

            “If either of you wanted to date me.”  He sighed.  “She wants grandchildren.”

            “We tried not to let her down too hard,” Nat assured him.  At least there were some kind of advantages to not actually having any parents.  “Anyway, we’ll have to stop by the library to pick up the poem, and then we’ll go straight to Dundee.  I left a message with Dr. Hughes that we were coming, so hopefully we can get the map Sir Steve mentioned without contaminating the wooden part, and everybody can be happy.”

            A champagne-coloured Nissan Altima turned the corner into the car park, and Dr. Wilson waved it over.  “Here he is!  Took him long enough.  You want to go get Carter and Sir Steve?” he asked Natasha.

            “I’ll be right back,” she promised.

            The chaos inside the police station was calming down a bit as people found their roles and settled into them, but Nat still had to wind her way in and out of a considerable hubbub to get back to the little interrogation room.  Sir Stephen and DI Carter were still in there – and apparently it was now _Carter_ ’s turn to listen raptly as Sir Stephen told a story.

            “The wooden frame of the catapult was quite whole,” he was saying, “so we only needed a bit of rope to get it working again.  We stole the rope from the Abbey’s well to use, then rolled the biggest stone we could find into the bucket, released the cantilever, and let it fly.”

            DI Carter smiled.  “Were there any survivors?” she asked.

            “We didn’t aim it at the Abbey!” Sir Stephen huffed.  “We turned it, that it might fling the stone into a field!  All it did there was frighten a few sheep.  Then we had the idea that we should pile some straw where the stone had landed, and _we_ would then be able to fly through the air on the catapult to a soft landing.”

            “That’s a terrible idea!” Carter protested.

            “Yes, it was,” Sir Stephen agreed, “but we were only eight years old, and had no such quantity of good sense.  We wound the rope again, and played at stone-shield-sword to see who would go first.  I won, so I climbed into the bucket and Buckeye sent me flying.”

            “Oh, no.  What happened?”

            Sir Stephen grinned.  “What neither of us had taken account of is that while I was small, I was still heavier than the stone, so I did not fly as far.  Rather than landing in the soft straw, I went straight into the thorny hedge at the edge of the pasture.”

            “Oh, _no_ ,” Carter repeated.  Her hands were at her mouth in horror, but she was also trying not to laugh.

            “Buckeye came and pulled me out, and my head was spinning so that I was promptly sick,” Sir Stephen said.  “We agreed to put the rope back on the well and pretend it had never happened, but of course my mother asked me how I’d come by my scratches and bruises.  I told her I’d been chased by the ram and had fallen into the hedge trying to escape him, but then I had no answer when she asked e why I was in the pasture in the first place.”

            Nat smiled to herself.  That was the problem with lies – they had to make _sense_.  The truth, as the past few days seemed determined to drive home, was under no such constraints.  She reached up and knocked on the door frame.

            “Hey, guys,” she said.  “Wilson got us a car, so we’re going to Dundee.”

            Sir Stephen and Carter looked up, then Carter moved her chair back a little as if embarrassed at being caught so close to him.  Nat wondered what they’d been talking about that had led to the catapult story.

            “That’s good,” Carter said.  “We’d better get a move on.”  She stood up.

            Sir Stephen stayed seated a moment longer.  He’d been smiling a moment ago, but now he’d lowered his head again.  Nat’s intrusion must have reminded him of things he really didn’t want to think about.

            “How’s he doing?” Nat whispered to Carter.

            “I am well enough, I suppose,” Sir Stephen said, before Carter could reply.  “There is nothing I am able to do about it, so I must continue my quest.  If I could not save my world, I must hope to save yours.”  He put a hand on the back of the chair and heaved himself out of it as if it were a great effort.  “Let us go.” 

* * *

 

            This was now the _fourth_ time Nat had driven the route between Dundee and Inverness, and she felt like she could probably have done so in her sleep – although with three extra people in the car, sleep was obviously impossible.  The hills and trees of the Cairngorms rolled past them under a sky piled high with dramatic clouds, but appreciating the scenery was likewise out of the question.

            Natasha’s original plan had been for their book on tape _Romance of Sir Stephen_ to play on the way, catching everybody up on the legend.  What she should have anticipated, but hadn’t, was Sir Stephen himself.  He kept cutting in with corrections and explanations that she had to pause the recording for, until eventually she just shut it off and let him tell his _own_ life story.  As Dr. Wilson had observed in the hospital, it was the stuff of Hollywood epic.

            He told them his mother had been the wife of an Irish fisherman.  Her husband had used to beat her until finally, in fear for her life, she fled in the middle of the night.  She put out to sea in a little boat, hoping to reach Wales, but strong winds blew her further south until she finally washed up on the coast of Cornwall.  From there she headed inland on foot, until she was found by the nuns at Rogsey Abbey.  They’d offered her shelter and a place to give birth to the child that turned out to be her son, Stephen.  He was weeks early, a tiny and fragile baby whom nobody expected would survive.  The nuns had him baptized, and prepared graves for mother and child in the Abbey’s consecrated ground.

            But Stephen and his mother had both lived.  His mother had taken vows, herself, and Stephen was allowed to live at the nunnery as long as he was still a child.  He’d had very few friends there.  The girls who came to train as novices treated him like a servant, and the boys who lived on the surrounding farms had no interest in him.  Most of these were older and taller than he, and the others didn’t want to play with someone who had to lie down and gasp for air after a few minutes’ run.  There was one, though, the son of a knight whose lands bordered the Abbeys’, who had taken Stephen under his wing.  His name was James, and his family called him Buckeye.

            It was easy to her the affection in Sir Stephen’s voice as he talked about his friend.  “The other boys complained that I could not keep up,” he said wistfully.  “Only Buckeye was willing to wait for me.  Were it not for him I think I would have died of loneliness.  Together we explored every crevice of the land between the Abbey and his father’s manor, playing at knights and dragons.”

            “And sometimes at catapults,” said DI Carter with a snicker.

            No good thing could last forever, though.  Stephen had only been twelve years old when his mother succumbed to a fever, and the nuns found themselves in a quandary.  They had allowed Stephen to stay because he was a child, and had no other parent but his mother.  Now she was dead, and he would soon be a man.  His presence among the brides of Christ was no longer acceptable, and the Abbess, with a heavy heart, had told him he would have to leave.

            Having grown up in the Abbey, Stephen had learned to read and write in both English and Latin, and he had a gift for painting glass.  The obvious solution was that he should find work as an artisan or a scribe, but he had no money to travel.  In order that he might earn some, Buckeye had taken him on as a page and errand-boy.

            “I only meant to stay with him as long as it took me to earn enough for a pony and a few other things I would need,” said Sir Stephen.  “He would have given me the money for nothing, but I would have felt like a leper begging for alms.  I wanted to make my own way in the world, if only to show all those who’d told me I was not capable.  But I did not want to leave my only friend, either, and so in the end I stayed with him for years, until he was knighted and the rumors of invasion began to swirl.

            “That was a troubling time,” he added.  “King Edward the Confessor was dying without heir, and we feared a war over the succession long before anyone had ever heard of William the Bastard.  When the Confessor named Harold Godwinson as his heir there was great rejoicing, but it ended quickly when we were told of the army gathering in Normandy.”

            Sir James’ friends had wanted him to leave Stephen behind.  What good, they’d asked him, was a page who barely had the strength to lift a sword?  Buckeye had dismissed their advice, saying that the strongest man in the world could not be half so loyal nor a quarter part as dear, but Stephen himself soon tired of their taunts.  He felt like a piece of baggage being dragged across the countryside, as if he were a sword with blunt edges or a shirt of mail worked in silver and gold – a thing of value, but of no real _use_.  Then, one night, he found an opportunity to do something about it.

            The party had stopped at a hall belonging to the Lady Margaret of Cartaster, and had asked her about the rumors of bandits on her land.  “She told us,” he said, “that they used to haunt her borders, but she had taken care of them.  They had captured her brother and held him for ransom, and she had gone personally to deliver the price for his return.  When she arrived however, she learned that the brigands had already killed him when he’d tried to escape.  In revenge she swore she would crucify them all, as Caesar did the pirates who kidnapped him.  Some of their heads were still on stakes outside the bailey walls when we arrived.”

            “Sounds like quite a girl,” Dr. Wilson observed, deadpan.

            “She was a great beauty,” said Sir Stephen, “but also a wise administrator and the equal in courage of any man I ever met.”  He was quiet for a moment, then added, “I wonder what became of her.  Did she marry?  Has she any descendants?”

            “I don’t know,” said Nat.  “It’s been a long time since I read the story but I don’t think it said much about her.  I don’t even know of Cartaster’s a real place or not.”

            “She would have none of the abuse the other men directed at me,” Sir Stephen added.  “She told them that for me to go into battle with the fail body God had given me, made me ten times as brave as they.”

            Again, his voice was full of sad nostalgia.  He must have been madly in love with this woman.  Had it been Lady Margaret and Sir James Buckeye he was thinking of, when he nearly burst into tears at the idea that it had been a thousand years since the last thing he remembered?

            The story went on, though: Lady Margaret had told them another thing about her lands.  She’d said there was a body of water nearby that was supposed to be the lake where Sir Griflet had thrown Excalibur after the death of King Arthur.  She had suggested they might water their horses there, and perhaps seek guidance from the Lady of the Lake, if they believed in such things.

            “We took her advice, and camped by the pond that night,” Sir Stephen went on.  “It didn’t look like a holy place to me, just a puddle of water, with ducks dabbling in it.  But once the others were asleep I waded in, grasping at the bottom in the hope of finding Excalibur.  I know not what I would have done with it had I found it.  I probably wouldn’t have been able to carry it.  Maybe I thought it would make me a warrior, as it had once made Arthur a king.”

            He hadn’t found any magic swords, but because he’d been away from the main group, Stephen had been the only one not captured or killed when the bandits attacked.  Sir James Buckeye had been taken hostage and most of his followers killed.  Stephen had tried to run and help them, but he’d caught his foot in the logs and stones on the bottom of the pond and couldn’t free it.  It was only hours later, as the sun rose, that he’d crawled back onto dry land with a broken ankle, alone and shivering and feeling like he’d failed them all.

            Nobody in the car was asking questions or making wisecracks now.  The wind rushed by outside and the engines purred as they headed south past Dalwhinnie, but not a word was spoken.

            “It was then, as the stars began to fade, that the Lady of the Lake appeared to me,” said Sir Stephen.  “She was clad in a silver gown that seemed to be made of the water itself.  Her hair was green and hung like wet rushes, her skin pale blue like the ice on the sea in winter, and her eyes were empty and white, like the eyes of an old man who can no longer see.  When I looked into them, though, I felt that she was not blind, but that she could see in so many other, better ways, that she had no need of eyes at all.

            “She called me by my name,” he went on, “and asked me if I wished to win glory by wielding Excalibur.  I told her that in that moment, I did not care if I died tomorrow and my name were forgotten by the ages, if only I could save Buckeye and his companions.  She smiled at me, and told me that a heart such as mine was destined to carry a shield, not a sword.  For a moment I thought she was telling me I was fit for nothing but to be Buckeye’s page – then, however, she took me by the hands and plunged me into her pool.  It seemed ever so much clearer and deeper than it had been, and so cold it burned me, and I could not swim.  I struggled and kicked and just as I thought I _must_ drown, my hands found something floating, which I used to pull myself to the surface.  It was a warrior’s shield with a star in the centre, and when I stood up in the shallows with it in my hands, I realized that not only had my ankle been healed, but I had grown taller.  I stood there then as you see me now, with my clothes all in shreds, for they no longer fit me.”

            So he’d set out to save his companions – but even with a stronger body, he’d known he wouldn’t be able to do it alone.  In search of help, he’d gone back to see the last person who’d believed in him.

            Lady Margaret had been understandably amazed by Stephen’s transformation, but lucky for Sir James Buckeye and the others, this was at least one adventure story in which the characters knew better than to stop for romance when there were lives on the line.  The lady had given Stephen a horse and some of her brother’s old armor, and had taken him to see a friend who had helped her hunt the bandits down the last time.  This man’s name, she said, was Harold.  He was based at a royal hunting lodge nearby, assembling his own army to meet the Normans at the front.

            Sir Harold had turned out to be a small man with a charming smile, always surrounded by women and easily distracted by military matters – but he had great respect for Lady Margaret, and at her urging had listened to Stephen’s tale.  He agreed with her that any man so favoured by the Lady of the Lake must be destined for great things, and chose a few men to accompany them and scout out the bandits’ lair.  After two days of searching, during which time Stephen had been embarrassed to discover his massive new appetite, they’d found a set of caves on the beach, and men loading money and goods into a boat to be taken to a Norman ship in the bay.  Sir Stephen had crept down into the cave to free the prisoners, while Sir Harold’s soldiers fought the brigands and set fire to their boats.

            “It was a terrible battle for so few participants,” said Sir Stephen.  “I found Buckeye beaten near to death.  He had continually insulted his keepers, until they threatened to do with him as they’d done with Sir Michael of Cartaster.  He thought he was in the grip of a fever dream, seeing me transformed as I was, but I persuaded him to follow and together we freed a dozen others.  Some were in chains, and others in cages like beasts.  We fought our way back out to where I expected Lady Margaret and Sir Harold would be waiting, and it was there we first beheld the Red Death.”

            Johann Totenkopf must have been a terrifying sight, the way Sir Stephen described him.  With the fire lighting up the garnets on his helmet, all anyone could see was a fiery skull in the darkness of the cave – the Red Death, indeed!  He’d told them that their escape would mean nothing, for he was about to deliver to William of Normandy a weapon that would make swords look like pins.  Legends would rise anew, he said, and England would return to the hands of the Vikings, where it belonged.  Then he took the arm of the little goblin at his side, and both vanished only moments before Stephen would have run him through.

            “A proper courtly tale would have ended in our triumphant reunion with our allies,” Sir Stephen said, “but I fear we got lost looking for the way back up the cliffs, and did not see Lady Margaret or Sir Harold again for some days.  When we met with them again, back at the king’s lodge, Lady Margaret merely told me I was late, while Sir Harold ordered me to take a knee, and there he knighted me at once.”  He smiled.  “For as I ought to have guessed for myself, he was none other than Harold, son of Godwin, King of England.  Buckeye raised a great shout for Sir Stephen of Rogsey, and it is by that name I was known thereafter.”

            “You see?” asked Dr. Wilson.  “I _told_ you guys this was great stuff.”

            It was a wonderful story, Nat had to admit – there was just the small problem that none of it could possibly have _happened_.  The only proven historical person in the whole thing was King Harold.  Rogsey Abbey and the keep at Cartaster had never been found archaeologically.  None of this had been written about by the contemporary chroniclers of the Norman invasion.  It had only begun appearing centuries later, in romances like the one they’d been listening to.  Heroic and inspiring as it was, it was a lie.

            That was what romances were, Nat thought, beautiful lies to hide the ugly truth that the Middle Ages had been a time of constant war, poverty, and disease.  Knights and kings had been little better than jumped-up bullies, rather than chivalrous heroes.  Monks and nuns were more often wealthy potentates than simple holy folk.  The lie was pretty, but the truth was ever so much more _human_.

            Then again, the way things were going Nat was no longer sure what the truth _was_.  Sir Stephen of Rogsey was nothing but a legend – but he was also sitting right behind her in the driver’s side back seat.  Was there even any point in studying history when something like that could happen?

            There was a sign up ahead.  “Dundee, five miles,” Nat read aloud.  “We’re almost there.”

            “Very good,” said Sir Stephen.  “I shall not feel complete until my shield is back on my arm.” 

* * *

 

            Natasha had met Dr. Yancy Hughes once or twice at university events, and had seen her on the news when she was interviewed in connection with the criminal cases she’d worked on.  She was tiny and plump, with dark skin and thick black hair that made her pale green eyes all the more striking.  When the party arrived, Dr. Hughes was in her lab giving some students advice on electrophoresis gels.  She looked up and smiled when Nat and the others walked in.

            “Did you forget something?” asked Dr. Hughes.

            “I’m sorry?” asked Nat, confused.

            “Well, you’re back,” Dr. Hughes pointed out.

            Nat felt her stomach sink clear down to her toes.  “Was I already here?” she asked.  Damn it, she should have waited until she could talk to Hughes in person rather than leaving a message!  She’d _seen_ Zola take her shape in Inverness.  She’d _heard_ the crunch of gravel that suggested somebody was hanging around eavesdropping on her conversations.  She ought to have seen this coming!  She should have told Hughes to ask her for ID or something.

            “Yeah, about twenty minutes ago,” said Dr. Hughes, who was now also puzzled.  “Are you okay?”

            “What did I say?” Natasha demanded.  “Did you give me the shield?”

            “Of course not!” Dr. Hughes said.  “That’s police evidence!  You said you needed a sample for radiocarbon dating, so you took it from behind the big metal bit in the centre so that it wouldn’t…” she stopped talking when she saw her guests’ horrified expressions.  “Well, where were you planning to take it from?  That’s the only spot we could be sure didn’t have blood on it.”  Her students had put down their gel trays and were watching, curious.

            Nat couldn’t explain, she realized.  Hughes would only think she was crazy, if she didn’t already.  She turned to her… _friends_ seemed like too strong a word.  _Colleagues_ didn’t quite work, either.  Was there a word that meant _the other people mixed up in this fiasco_?  If there were, it was probably nine syllables of German.

            Whatever she might call them, she turned to Sir Stephen, Carter, and Wilson.  “Spread out,” she ordered.  “Look for… he won’t be me anymore.”  How did you recognize a shapeshifter?  “Look for anybody suspicious.  If you meet one of us and you’re not sure it’s _really_ one of us, the password will be _Volgograd_.”

            “Got it,” Carter nodded.

            “Wait!” Dr. Hughes protested, as they all headed for the door again.  “What’s going on?”

            “We don’t know,” Nat replied, which was for the most part entirely honest.

            At the front door of the Life Sciences Building they split up.  Carter crossed the street to check around Belmont Flats.  Dr. Wilson went to circle the building, Sir Stephen went south to try the car park there, and Nat headed north, to check the other lot outside the Institute of Sport and Exercise.  There were three rows of cars there, with a few people getting in or out, or looking for something in the boot.  Nat ran up and down the rows, checking back seats and looking at each person and what they were carrying.  She got some odd stares, but didn’t find anything suspicious.

            Of course she didn’t.  Zola had been smart – he’d only taken what he needed, rather than the whole shield, and there was absolutely no reason why he should continue using Nat’s face after he had what he’d come for.  Any one of these people might be him, or they might all be totally uninvolved.  Once he was gone, there was no way to ever find him again, and he had a twenty minute head start.  He could be halfway to Edinburgh by now.

            Several people were staring at Natasha from various corners of the car park.  A young woman, all dressed up for some special occasion in a sky-blue sari that kept blowing in her face.  A tall man in a dark suit and green tie, frowning in deep disapproval of whatever he thought Nat was doing.  A couple of students who had just gotten out of their car, looking worried they might have done something wrong.  Nat sighed, gave them a half-hearted wave, and turned to trudge back to the Life Sciences building.

            Dr. Hughes was waiting at the doors.  “I had a look around the building,” she said.  “Some people said they’d seen you come and go earlier, but none of them thought there was anything weird.”

            “Password,” Nat prompted.

            “Huh?  Oh, right.  Uh… _Volgograd_ ,” said Hughes.  “Seriously what is this?  Do you have an evil twin or something?”

            “Would you believe me if I said yes?” asked Nat.

            Hughes thought about it for a moment.  “Maybe?”

            The others drifted back, one by one, and each gave the password when Nat demanded it.  They all looked deeply disheartened, and none of them had found a single thing.

            “We don’t even know who to look for,” Carter said.  “He could be _anybody_ … and he probably left your fingerprints all over that shield,” she added in disgust.

            “Of course he didn’t,” said Hughes.  “I know better than that – we used gloves!  What _is_ all this?”

            “It doesn’t matter,” sighed Nat.  It was too late to do anything about it now.

            “What do you mean, _it doesn’t matter_?” asked Hughes.  “You can’t imply that your evil twin is stealing police evidence and then tell me it doesn’t matter!”

            “It doesn’t matter because there’s no time to talk about it now,” Nat insisted.  “I’ll explain it to you someday.”  Someday when she’d had time to think of an explanation that made more sense than the reality did.  “Right now we have to figure out what we’re going to do next.”

            “And we really need the DNA from the Pierce crime scene,” Carter added.  “As soon as we can get it.”

            “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Nat assured Hughes.  “I’m the one who overlooked the obvious.  We’ll see you later, okay?  Thank you for trying to help.”

            It was an abrupt and rather rude goodbye to somebody who probably deserved more information,  but anything else they said would have been an obvious, awkward lie, and the truth was ridiculous.  It was enough to make Nat toy with the idea of pulling her vanishing act immediately once this weird interlude was over.  Not wanting to talk to a co-worker wasn’t really a good enough reason to just abandon the life she had so carefully built for herself… but it _would_ be a bonus if the situation later provided her with a better one.

            The group went back to their car and climbed in, but instead of going anywhere they just sat there, trying to figure out their next move.  This time, it was Dr. Wilson who took charge.

            “All right, Sir Steve,” he said.  “You must have _seen_ this map at some point.  What did it look like?  Where did _you_ think it was leading you?”

            Nat wasn’t sure what she thought of that approach.  Could they really figure out where the Grail was based on a verbal _description_ of a map?  That seemed unlikely.  After all, at the time Sir Stephen had been turned to stone, or whatever had happened, he still hadn’t found it despite having the map itself.

            “It was engraved on the back of a piece of blue-green stone, the upper surface of which was carved as an Egyptian scarab,” Sir Stephen explained.  “Or so Gabriel the Moor told me, at least.  I do not personally know what sort of beetles they have in Egypt.  He thought it had most likely come to our country with the Romans, before being re-fashioned into the Grail map.  Has anyone a quill and some vellum?”

            Carter gave him a pen and notepad out of her purse.

            “There were thirteen pits, or so we believe,” Sir Stephen said, drawing dots on the paper.  “The stone was quite damaged and we weren’t sure they were all intentional parts of the engraving.  Twelve were in an oval, and the thirteenth was here.”  His diagram showed a rough ellipse of dogs, and then one at what seemed to be one of the foci.

            “That looks almost like an astronomical diagram,” Natasha observed.  According to Kepler’s laws, the orbits of the planets were ellipses with the sun at one focus, but Kepler hadn’t come along until the seventeenth century, well after Sir Stephen’s time.  Not to mention that a scarab signet, which was what this Gabriel the Moor seemed to be describing, would already have been over a thousand years old by the time Sir Stephen got his hands on it.

            “What did you think it meant?” asked Dr. Wilson.

            “Supposedly there were at one time six such scarabs,” Sir Stephen said, “each a map to where the wise man Hermes Trimegistus had hidden objects too powerful for any human being to possess.  The other five had been destroyed or lost, but this was passed down by the druids.  It looked to us like one of the circles of stones you find in the north, but the Red Death had seemed to think that the place could only _truly_ be found by a man with the map in his hand.”

            “A stone circle… like the ones near Gran’s place in the Orkneys!” DI Carter exclaimed.  She studied the diagram a moment, then pulled out her phone.  “Google Earth, don’t fail me now!” she said, and began typing something in.

            Sir Stephen and Dr. Wilson sat up in the back seat to look over Carter’s shoulders, and Nat would have leaned left to do the same, but then her own phone rang.  She pulled it out to see who was calling, and found that it was Sue.  Hopefully it was something important.  Nat opened the door and climbed out so the others wouldn’t interrupt the conversation, and put the phone to her ear.

            “Hello?” she asked.

            “Natalie, thank goodness!” said Sue.  “Are you still on campus?”

            “Yes,” said Nat.  “I’m… I’m outside the Life Sciences building.  I saw Dr. Hughes and now we’re… trying to find an address.”  She glanced at Carter and her google search.

            “I need you up here in the office,” Sue said.  “Quickly, please.”

            Nat stiffened.  “Why?  What’s going on?” she asked, as her imagination offered up a dozen horrible possibilities.  Was Zola in there?  Was a crazed gunman holding the department hostage?  Had the row of fairy figurines Sue kept on the shelf above her desk come to life and started causing mischief?  It didn’t seem like today had _room_ for anything else to go wrong, but at the same time, with the rules history apparently out the window, the possibilities for what _might_ go wrong were endless.

            “Just come up,” Sue said.  “Hurry!”  And with that, she ended the call.


	7. So That's What It Does

            Nat waited a moment, in case Sue hadn’t actually hung up.  Then she realized she _had_ , and groaned out loud.

            “ _Now_ what’s wrong?” asked Dr. Wilson?

            This was getting ridiculous.  “I don’t know.  She wouldn’t tell me,” said Nat.  “Follow me, my office is this way.”  She had a bad feeling about this, and wanted the others with her.  That way, if she ended up facing any more nonsense, she’d at least have somebody to share it with.  She stuck her phone back in her purse and set off across the campus at a fast walk.

            The building was still standing.  That was a good sign, but Nat still decided she couldn’t risk taking the elevator and instead ran up the steps as fast as she could.  The closer they got, the worse grew Nat’s sense of foreboding.  What had been going on, that Sue could make a phone call and ask her to come but couldn’t tell her _why_?  Nat thought back to the people she’d seen in the car park.  Who had the man in the suit been?  Was _he_ involved in this?  Could the woman in the sari have been Zola in disguise?

            By the time she reached the doors of the archaeology department, Nat was running.  She burst into the room, startling Sue, who jumped up from behind her desk with a hand over he heart.

            “Oh!  Natalie, it’s only you,” she said.

            Nat looked around.  Nothing was obviously out of place.  The only other person present was a man with shaggy graying hair who’d been helping himself to coffee when Nat burst in.  Everything, from the posters on the walls to Sue’s collection of fairies to the old Bird’s Custard Powder tin where she kept her pens looked like it normally did… which made Nat’s spirits sink yet further as she realized she’d been tricked _again_.  Zola wasn’t in here.  He was probably the one who’d made the call, mimicking Sue’s voice the way he’d mimicked the reporter’s when he called Dr. Wilson – and now Nat and the others were here, while he escaped from campus.

            Or maybe not – because as soon as Sue had recovered from her surprise, she gave Nat a beaming smile.  “Surprise!” she said.

            She was looking at the man by the coffee machine.  Puzzled, Nat followed her gaze.

            “Hi, Ginger Snap,” said the man.  He was around five foot nine, dressed in an olive-green down jacket over a sweater with a patterned yoke, and a pair of aged jeans.  Though in his late sixties he still had all his hair, and his eyes were pale blue, like Natasha’s.  He was holding out his left arm, the one he wasn’t using to hold a paper coffee cup, as if he were expecting a hug.

            Nat took a step backward, feeling sick.  She knew who he _looked_ like he was – she had a reasonably clear mental picture of the man – but he _didn’t exist_.  This man existed even less than Sir Stephen of Rogsey existed.  Sir Stephen was presumably a fourteenth-century compilation of earlier legends that probably had some basis in history, however unrecognizable three centuries of retelling might have left it.  Allen Jones, on the other hand, was somebody Natasha herself had made up out of whole cloth, to add some flavour to her biography.

            Sue continued to beam like the sun.  “He arrived around lunch time,” she explained.  “I told him you’d probably be here after you saw Dr. Hughes, but I got tired of waiting and just couldn’t resist, so I rang you.  I’m sorry for giving you a scare, but I had to see your reaction!”

            The man was still standing there expectantly, but he was beginning to look confused, as if people were not reacting in the way he’d expected.  Natasha shook her head, trying to snap herself out of her shock.  She couldn’t just stand there.  This was a trick.  It _had_ to be a trick.  But how had Zola or Totenkopf or whoever was responsible _known_ what she imagined her pretend father looking like?  Could they read her mind?

            “Natalie?” the man asked.

            Somehow, that did it.  Nat snapped back to reality, dropped her purse, and grabbed the man by the collar of his jacket.  He let out a squawk of surprise as she threw him to the ground and knelt on his back, twisting an arm up behind him so he couldn’t wiggle away.  She half expected this to make him transform back into Zola, but he didn’t, so she leaned down to hiss in his ear.

            “Who the hell are you?” she demanded through her teeth.

            “What?” he asked, uncomprehending.

            “ _Tell me_!” Nat insisted.  Nobody was going to manipulate her emotions like this.  She would not allow it.

            “I’m your father!” he gasped out.  “You saw me at Christmas, remember?”

            That was what she’d told Sue on the phone.  Had _that_ been Zola she was speaking to?  Could he listen in on her telephone calls somehow?  Had the crunch she’d heard been him moving around, invisible?

            “Natalie!” Sue exclaimed, and ran to drag her off the man.  The others had looked unsure a moment ago, but once Sue acted they moved in to help – she and Sir Stephen pulled Nat off the stranger, while DI Carter and Dr. Wilson helped the man stand up again and brush himself off.

            Nat twisted herself out of Sue’s hands easily, but Sir Stephen had a grip like a vise and she couldn’t twist free.  “Let go of me!” she ordered.  “That is _not_ my father!”

            Sue had already been shocked by seeing Nat jump on the man – now her face paled until it went nearly gray.  “He _said_ he was!” she protested.  “Who is he, then?”

            Nat had expected the stranger to run as soon as he was free.  That was what most people did when they were skilled enough or lucky enough to escape from a black widow.  Instead, however, he straightened up his clothing and just _stared_ at her, uncomprehending and upset.  His face was that of a man who’d been not just surprised and frightened, but _betrayed_.

            “I don’t know,” Nat said.  “That’s why he’s going to tell us!”

            She moved towards the man.  He didn’t flinch or try to move away, which was unusual – people twice his size had taken a step back when Natasha approached them with purpose in her stride.  This man just looked at her with a puppy dog face, as if he expected to be punished but didn’t know what he’d done wrong.  It took an unusual amount of resolve not to feel sorry for him.

            “Start talking,” she ordered.  “Who are you, and who sent you?”

            He just looked at her, dumbfounded.

            “I’m not going to ask a second time,” Nat warned him.

            The man sucked on his lower lip for a moment.  “I… my name is Allen Jones,” he said finally.  “I flew from LaGuardia to Edinburgh and then took the train.  I’m here to see my daughter.  She told me she had a dinner this weekend and I didn’t think I’d be able to come, but then my car club cancelled because of the weather so I thought I’d surprise her.”  He paused a moment and added, “she looks just like you.”

            Nat searched his face for tell-tale expressions, for changes in breathing or a glance to the side, for any of the dozen fragments of body language that indicated a lie.  The man showed none of them.  That meant he’d either had training in this, or else he actually believed what he was saying.  The latter possibility seemed horrifyingly plausible.  After all, Sir Stephen believed _he_ was really a medieval knight.  Why shouldn’t this stranger believe he really was Allen Jones?

            She trawled through her memory for details of her imaginary biography.  “What’s my birthday?” was her first question.  An imposter would know that if he’d done his research – she’d used her real one.

            “November the twenty-second,” the stranger replied.

            That was correct.  Now for something harder.  “What’s yours?”  As far as Nat could remember, she’d never written _that_ down anywhere but in her own notes.

            “January third, 1952,” he said, without having to think about it.

            That sounded right, although Nat would have to go through her stuff at home to find out for sure.  “What high school did I go to?” she tried.  That was also something somebody could have found out – she’d needed one to put on her academic transcripts.

            “Manhasset Secondary,” the stranger said.  “And then you angsted over college applications all winter, because you couldn’t decide whether you wanted to go to Empire State University for archaeology and history, or the School of American Ballet.”

            The hairs on the back of Natasha’s neck stood up.  She’d once told Sue, in casual conversation, that if she hadn’t been an archaeologist she would have wanted to be a ballerina.  It was something she had in fact considered when trying to invent a civilian life for herself, but she’d decided it would remind her too much of the drills in the Red Room.  She swallowed to wet her dry throat, and tried a trick question.  “What about my brother?  What college did _he_ go to?”

            “What?” the stranger asked.  “You don’t have a brother.  You’re an only child.  Natalie, what’s going on?” he asked, his voice and eyes both pleading for answers.  “Have… is this an alternate universe or something?  I don’t understand!”

            He looked so miserable, part of Nat honestly wished there were something she could have said to comfort him.  The part that still thought like a spy, however, observed that of _course_ she felt sorry for him.  That was what he was designed for.  He’d been sent here to catch her off guard and upset her, and it was working.  She couldn’t let anybody _see_ that it discomfited her.

            “Nat?” Sue ventured.

            “Yeah?” Nat asked.  She was trying to think, but wasn’t making a lot of progress.  What _was_ going on here?  Why, all of a sudden, was the impossible becoming real?

            “I’m sorry if… I’ve never seen a picture of your father,” Sue said.  “He told me that’s who he was, and I didn’t know… how could I?”

            “Why are you so sure I’m not your father?” asked the stranger.

            Nat sighed.  This was a terrible time to start telling the truth, but it seemed like the only thing to do under the circumstances.  “I don’t have a father,” she said.  “I don’t have _parents_.  They left me on a doorstep when I was two years old.  I only know their names.  I never found out what happened to them, but I’ve always assumed they were dead.”

            Sue stared at the stranger with a new degree of horror.  “So why did you tell me your father was alive in New York?” she wanted to know.

            “Because that’s what I told _everybody_ ,” said Natasha – and she _almost_ followed it up with a sob story about how she hadn’t wanted to admit she didn’t have a family.  She stopped herself, though, because she wondered… what would happen if she lied again?  Would that, too, suddenly come to life?  “Look, uh… the truth is, I’m not who I’ve told _anybody_ I am,” she admitted.  “My name is Natalia Romanova.  I escaped from Russia after the Communist regime fell and I knew nothing good would happen if they found me or if the Americans did, so I tried to come up with some other life for myself in Europe and this is what I settled on.  I’d been taught to speak American English, so I said I was an American, and I invented a background for myself.  I called my parents Allen and Kathy because the only things I know about my real ones is that their names were Alian and Katerina.”

            Nobody knew _what_ to say about that.  Everybody in the room – Carter, Wilson, Sir Stephen, Sue, and the stranger who called himself Allen Jones – just gaped at her, as if they found _her_ story somehow less likely than anything else they’d heard today.

            “And now I guess I have to tell the truth,” Nat went on, “because the last time I lied was on the phone with Sue this morning, and now poof!  Here he is!”  She gestured to the stranger.  “Between this and the stupid lake monster, it’s as if…”

            She cut herself off as it hit her.  That was the pattern.  _That_ was what all this nonsense had in common.

            “As if what?” asked Carter.

            “Not _as if_.  That’s what’s happening,” said Natasha.  “It’s imaginary things becoming real.  First it was Sir Steve…”

            “I’m not imaginary,” Sir Stephen protested.

            “Shut up, yes you are,” said Nat.  “You were invented by an anonymous fourteenth century poet based on older oral sources.  The Loch Ness monster is imaginary, because as DI Carter pointed out when she talked about the seals, there’s no way something that big could be living in the Loch just a few minutes from a major city and not be obvious.  And _you_ ,” she pointed at the man who, for lack of anything better, she was going to have to call Jones.  “I made _you_ up myself because I didn’t know anything about my real father!  It’s imaginary things coming to life!”

            That was _what_ was going on – but _how_?  As they’d determined earlier, Sir Stephen coming to life was something somebody had done on purpose, or at least as a sort of side effect to bringing the Red Death to life.  The Loch Ness Monster and Allen Jones, though… had those been accidents?  Had the monster become real because it was the highest-profile lie in the general area?  As usual in archaeology _or_ spying, having an answer just led to a dozen more difficult questions.

            “So why just those?” asked Carter.

            “Yeah, why aren’t we up to our ears in kids’ imaginary friends, with the Hogwarts Express pulling in to King’s Cross?” Wilson said.

            “I don’t know,” said Nat, “but there’s got to be some kind of criterion…”

            “Maybe it’s only the imaginary things somebody actually believes in?” Sue suggested.

            Oddly enough, that made perfect sense.  “Yes!” Nat exclaimed.  “You believed my father was alive in America because I told you so!  Loads of people believe in the Loch Ness Monster, especially some idiot who’s been here for over a decade searching for it!”

            “What of me, then?” asked Sir Stephen.  “You’ve made it sound as though _nobody_ believes in _me_.”

            He sounded annoyed and was probably trying to make a point about Nat’s skepticism, but it was a question worth considering.  “There are people who believe in King Arthur,” said Natasha.  “I’m sure there are people who believe in you.  Even I figured somebody _like_ you must have existed for the stories to be based on.”  She cocked her head, thinking.  “Maybe that’s why Pierce showed me the statues and told me the story.  He was trying to get me to believe in them.  I didn’t, but he must have found somebody else who did.”

            “What were the statues _for_ , though?” asked Wilson.  “They didn’t need statues to make him,” he pointed at Jones.  “Or the monster, either.”

            This time it was Sir Stephen who figured it out.  “It must be because of the time,” he said.  “If I had lived and died a thousand years ago, there might be left no trace of my bones, my shield, nor the Grail map.  Were I turned to stone and then restored, I could last the ages intact, as could the Red Death and the map.”

            That worked, in a twisted, fairy-tale sort of way, enough so that Nat could now feel they had a working theory of this absurd situation.  “Okay,” she nodded.  “We have some idea _what_ they’re doing.  If we want them to cut it out, we have to figure out _how_ they’re doing it.”

            “That I have no answer for,” said Sir Stephen.  “Magic as I understand it cannot create life from nothing, whether men or monsters.  The power a sorcerer wields is the life force itself, and to use that to create _new_ life would require the blood of all that breathes.  This is something else.”

            “Then we need to find out what,” said Nat.  “Which means we need to find Zola, and we know _he’s_ going to the place in your Grail map, so that’s where we have to go, too.  Carter, you thought you knew what it showed.  You were googling it.”

            “Sort of,” said Carter.  She took out her phone and brought up the picture she’d found, of a stone circle very like the one the map seemed to represent.  “This is the Twelve Apostles in Orkney, near my Gran’s house.  It’s a circle of twelve stones, but it’s too round and it doesn’t have that extra one in the middle.  The Orkney Islands are full of stone circles, though, and they’re some of the oldest in the British Isles.  If Sir Steve’s map shows one of those, and the Red Death was on his way to Scotland, it’s probably there.”

            “So now what?” asked Dr. Wilson.  “What do we do, just go to the Orkneys and check all the henges one by one?  How many are there?”

            “Technically, a _henge_ is a bank with an internal ditch, not a stone circle,” said Nat.

            That was beside the point, so nobody paid it any attention.  “Well, we know we don’t need to check the Twelve Apostles because I can already see that’s not the one,” Carter said.  “But yeah, there’s got to be dozens.  Probably way more that have fallen down in the last thousand years and nobody knows about them anymore.”

            “There’s gotta be a better way than visiting them all,” Wilson protested.  “We’ll be there until next year.  How were _you_ planning on finding it, way back when?” he asked Sir Stephen.  “Did you have… uh, I don’t know, a wizard or somebody who was going to show you the way?”

            “No,” Sir Stephen admitted.  “As you say, we thought we would simply visit them al in turn until we found the one that matched.  We think the Red Death had a way to rule them out, but we never knew for sure.”

            “We do know a couple of things,” said DI Carter.  “We know it’s thirteen stones, and we know they’re not in a circle…”

            “Medieval maps aren’t known for their accurate cartography,” Natasha said dubiously.  “It might look like that just because that’s the shape the gem was already in.  We don’t even know for sure it’s a stone circle.  That’s just what Sir Steve things it is.  Maybe it’s a riddle instead of a map.”

            DI Carter shook her head.  “We’ve got to make _some_ assumptions, or else it’s like Dr. Wilson said and we’ll be here for months!” she protested.  “In the force, if we have unknowns we start with the strictest set of criteria and rule those possibilities out first, and only then do we cast our nets a little wider.  So we should start with thirteen stones in an ellipse.”  She looked around at the pictures and bookshelves on the walls.  “This is an archaeology department,” she observed.  “Do you have… I don’t know, some kind of _list_ of henges in the Orkneys?  Preferably with maps?”

            “Yes!” squealed Sue.  “We do!”

            Her voice sounded so odd that everybody turned to look at her, and when they did they found her with her eyes wide and her hands held out, as if she were grabbing at the one straw of a thing she understood in this mess.  “Lau's _Enquête sur l'Ecosse Néolithique_!  I found it mis-shelved in the Spanish section of the faculty library at the end of last term!  I'll go get it right away!” she said, and literally _ran_ out the door to find the room.

            The rest of them watched her go.  “Uh… is she gonna be okay?” asked Allen Jones.

            “I hope so,” said Nat.  Sue was an organizer – she kept the department tidy and easy to navigate for a dozen scatterbrained professors and she was quite good at it.  Her world needed to make meticulous sense, and she’d just witnessed something that made no sense whatsoever.  Nat could only be grateful that Sue hadn’t been present for Zola’s transformation, or the poor woman would probably have lost her mind.

            “We have it!” Sue shouted through the wall.  “Here it is!”

            She bustled back into the room with a very large hardcover book bound in blue canvas.  If the cover had ever had a paper sleeve, it had fallen apart long ago.  Sue put it down on her desk and opened it so she could fold out one of the maps for them.  “This should be just what your research requires!” she declared.  “Come on, let’s get you all comfortable, and I’ll see if we have any Pimm’s left!”  Her voice had a high-pitched, desperate edge to it that made Natasha worry she was going to pass out at any moment.

            Nat reached out a hand, but did not actually touch the woman.  “Sue,” she said.  “I know I’m not the department head, but why don’t you just take the rest of the day off?”  People had their weirdness thresholds, and Sue had clearly reached hers.

            Sue grabbed Nat’s arm.  The relief in her expression was obvious.  “Are you _sure_?” she asked.

            “Very sure,” said Nat.  “Go visit Brandon or something.  I bet he’d be happy to have you check up on him.”

            “Oh, thank you, Natalie!” said Sue.  “I do think I need a break.  Yes, thank you very much!”

            “You’re welcome.”  Nat gave Sue a pat on the shoulder.  Sue grabbed her purse, and the others made way for her to hurry out of the room.

            With Sue gone, Nat locked the office door so they wouldn’t be disturbed, and everybody squeezed into the department library.  This was a tiny room on the other side of the wall from Sue’s desk, crammed with bookshelves that only barely left room for a table and chairs.  The shelves held everything from textbooks of Old English to more archaeological surveys to a disintegrating Penguin Classics edition of the Prose Eddas, and there was a single small window above the radiator that looked out on the car park.  Through this, Nat could see Sue climbing into her car.  Hopefully, she would be okay.

            Sir Stephen sat down at the little table, and Nat laid the book, still open to the first map Sue had shown them, in front of him.  This was an outline of Scotland and the nearby islands, with the locations of Neolithic sites marked.  She folded that u again and went on to the appendices – detailed survey maps of all the larger known stone circles in the country, all to scale and documenting the suspected locations of missing stones.  If any trace of the circle in the Grail map still existed, it ought to be in there.  “Look through this,” she told Sir Stephen.  “The ones that look like your ring, put one of these on it so it sticks out at the side.”  She gave him a block of post-it notes.  “They’ve got one sticky edge.”

            “Thank you,” said Sir Stephen, and reverently turned a page.  He was from an age when books had been rare and precious, Nat observed.  They wouldn’t have to worry about him being rough with them.  “I had not expected any part of my quest to take place in a library,” he said.

            “I’d say libraries are where most questing goes on, these days,” Natasha replied.

            In order not to distract him, the rest of the group left Sir Stephen alone with the book and returned to Sue’s office, where there were more chairs and enough space that they wouldn’t feel like sardines in a book-lined tin.  Allen Jones went to pour himself another cup of coffee, the first one having been spilled when Natasha attacked him – she noticed that his hands were still shaking a bit.  Dr. Wilson wandered around looking at the posters and replica artefacts that decorated the room, and DI Carter sat down to check her email.

            “Hughes identified the blood from the warehouse floor,” she announced.

            “Pierce’s?” Nat guessed.  She wasn’t sure if that would surprise her or not.  She had a feeling that Mr. Pierce wasn’t merely a victim in this… but she was also plenty familiar with people who turned on their allies the moment they were no longer useful.

            “Nope.  It’s a guy named Mick O’Herlihy,” Carter replied.  “We had his profile because he’d been arrested for breaking into people’s cars a few years back.  He did community service and we let him go.”  She frowned.  “Why is his name famimliar?”

            “The Loch Ness Monster guy was O’Herlihy,” said Wilson.

            That was interesting, Nat thought.  Could they be relatives?  Or was this just a coincidence?

            “Oh, right.”  Carter nodded.  “That’s why.  Anyway, she says she’s going to work on the shield next, but it might be a problem getting DNA off something made of beat-up wood and leather.  She’s as likely to get a profile for the tree or the cow as for whoever bled on it.”

            “Fair enough,” said Natasha.  DNA results weren’t something you could rush, not if you wanted them done properly, so they’d just have to wait.  In the mean time… she looked over at Allen Jones.  What the hell was she going to do about _him_?

            He looked back at her, and ventured a timid smile.  “So, uh, who are your friends?” he asked uncomfortably.  He was trying to sound as if everything were normal.  He knew it was not.

            Natasha thought of telling him that they weren’t really friends, but didn’t feel it was worth it.  “Well, that’s Detective Inspector Sharon Carter, from Inverness.”

            “Hi,” said Carter.

            “Nice to meet you, Inspector,” Jones replied.

            “This is Dr. Sam Wilson, who used to work at Raigmore Hospital,” Nat went on.

            Jones shook his hand.  “That was a terrible thing to hear about,” he said, referring to the hospital collapse.  “Any clue who did it yet/  Has anyone claimed responsibility?”

            “I don’t know,” Dr. Wilson said.  “I’ve been pretty busy.”

            “We’re working on it,” Carter promised.  If either of them were trying _not_ to sound a little sarcastic, they failed.

            “And the guy we left in the other room is Sir Stephen of Rogsey,” Nat finished.  “He’s a Saxon knight from the eleventh century.  Or at least, _he_ thinks he is.”  The unspoken corollary hung in the air: _like you think you’re my father_.

            “I see,” said Jones.  “What’s going on with the stone circle thing?”

            “We’re looking for the Holy Grail,” said Wilson.

            Jones seemed to think about that a moment, then shrugged slightly, as if he’d decided it made about as much sense as any of the rest of it.  “I don’t know if I can be any help with that,” he said.  “I’ve only seen the movie.  I’ve been to Stonehenge, though,” he offered, and smiled at Natasha.  “That was your Mom and I’s second honeymoon, remember?  You stayed with your aunt in the city, and she said she took you to the Museum of Natural History…” his voice trailed off when he saw Nat’s face.

            “I don’t remember,” she said, as neutrally as possible.

            Nat felt a bit bad for him, honestly.  In Allen Jones’ own mind, he’d come all this way to see a daughter who’d responded by throwing him on the floor and telling him he didn’t exist.  Or had he?  Maybe that was what Zola, or somebody else, _wanted_ Natasha to think.  She was still worried that this was an attempt to deliberately play on her emotions, giving her something she’d always wished she had in an attempt to weaken her.  Maybe to soften her belief in objective truth, the kind she tried to uncover in mossy ruins and smashed pottery, and make her more open to some alternate version of reality.  That was what Zola had said in the police station: _truth is something we make up_.  This was certainly a good demonstration.

            “Your… your parents left you, you said?” Jones asked.

            “I’m sure they had their reasons,” Nat replied.  She’d hated them for it once, but since then she’d come to realize that the world was more complicated.  “That was towards the end of the USSR, shortly after Chernobyl.  Maybe they had no money.  Maybe they were dying of radiation sickness.”  Either way, she liked to hope they hadn’t actually known who they were leaving her with.  If they’d believed their daughter had been raised with love… well, that was just another beautiful lie, wasn’t it?

            “Well, on their behalf, I apologize,” said Jones.  “They don’t know what they missed.”

            “They didn’t miss anything,” Nat told him.  “Whatever you remember about me isn’t real.  I never did any of that.”

            “You were never in ballet recitals?”  He smiled kindly.  “Never built snowmen?”

            “Never,” said Nat.

            “Oh.”  He fell silent, and Nat couldn’t help feeling like she’d robbed him of something.

            For a moment Jones just stood there, staring into his coffee.  Then he drained the cup and put it down on the table.

            “I came here to see you,” he told Natasha.  “If you don’t want to see me, I guess I might as well just go home.”

            Nat’s gut reaction was that this was a terrible idea.  If he were something Zola had created, somebody they couldn’t trust, then she didn’t want him out of her sight.  _Keep you friends close_ , as the saying went, _but your enemies closer_.  Besides, there was another complicating factor.

            “Do you _have_ a home?” Nat asked.  His address in Manhasset was for an empty lot, and his phone number didn’t exist.  His credit cards and passport probably didn’t, either.  What would happen if he _tried_ to go home?  What would happen when he got there?

            “Of course I do,” he said.  “I only left it last night.”

            ‘You didn’t even exist last night,” said Nat.

            There was something else, too – if Natasha wasn’t sure she could trust Jones, then how did she know she could trust Sir Stephen, either?  _He_ seemed to believe he was in the right, but was he?  After all, his goal was the same as he claimed the bad guys’ was.  To find the Holy Grail.

            Maybe _that_ was the real reason Nat liked archaeology, she thought.  It was full of puzzles and politics, but none of them had immediate _consequences_.  If DI Carter had been investigating the case of a man accused of murdering his two young nephews in order to steal their inheritance, it would involve grieving relatives and demands for justice, not to mention the national scandal if they’d been members of the royal family.  If Nat were doing it, then King Richard III and the Princes in the Tower were long dead, and historians and archaeologists could suggest whatever theories they liked without worrying that they were ruining anyone’s life.

            When you made it real, she thought, it just wasn’t _fun_ anymore.


	8. Supper and North

            That was an extremely awkward place in the conversation, but neither Nat nor Allen Jones could think of what to say next – so it was a relief to everybody when Sir Stephen suddenly shouted, “this is it!”

            He burst out of the library room with the book in his hands.  There were a few of the post-its sticking out of its pages, but Sir Stephen ignored them all as he set the book down on Sue’s desk and reverently unfolded one of the big maps.  It depicted an ellipse of eight extant stones and dotted outlines to show where Lau’s expedition had found evidence of four more that were now gone.  The one that had once been at the focus had fallen down and broken in two, and another dotted line showed where Lau thought it had once stood upright.

            With the others leaning over her shoulders to see, Natasha read off the caption: “ _L'anneau à Cracnesse, sur l'île de Flotta_.”  _The Ring at Kracness, on the island of Flotta_.

            Carter was already googling it.  “All right – according to Wikipedia, _Kracness Circle on the island of Flotta is one of the oldest known stone circles in the British Isles.  It is believed to date from around 3500 BC, making it a thousand years older than the pyramids at Gizeh.  The circle forms part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, and is looked after by Historic Scotland as a scheduled monument_.”  She looked up at Nat.  “Meaning nobody’s allowed to dig it up.”

            “Meaning you need _permission_ to dig it up,” Natasha corrected.  “So if the Grail’s buried there and they try, we can have them arrested for disturbing a historic monument.”  She wasn’t sure how that would work when the offenders were a kobold and a resurrected sorcerer, of course, and the others looked pretty dubious of the prospect.  “We have to assume that if we can find this just by looking it up, they can too, so if we want to be there ahead of them we’d better get going.”

            “Should _we_ not seek permission to be there?” asked Sir Stephen.

            “Nah,” said Nat.  “That takes _months_.  If we’re careful nobody will be able to tell we were there.”  Restoring the site was one of the less-glamorous parts of archaeology, but it was just as essential as digging it up in the first place.

            Sue would be upset if she found the book left just lying there, so Nat carefully put it back in the ‘to be shelved’ basket on the library table before they left.  As they took the very old, slow elevator back to the ground floor, Dr. Wilson cleared his throat.

            “So… what if the Red Death _is_ there ahead of us?” he asked.

            “Then we kill him,” Sir Stephen replied grimly.

            “Oh?  That easy, is it?” asked Dr. Wilson.

            “If we were indeed both turned to stone, then our duel is unfinished,” said Sir Stephen.  “I have my doubts whether there is any shred of honour in the man, but if there is, he will want to finish it as much as I.”

            “That could be a problem when your sword’s still in an evidence locker in Inverness,” DI Carter observed.  “They’ll have set all that aside while they try to figure out what the hell went on in that room.”

            “Then we’ll just have to get them out,” Nat decided, “and the rest of us will have to arm ourselves, too.”  She considered her companions.  “Dr. Wilson, you were in the military.  You must know how to handle a firearm.  Carter obviously has her service weapon, and I’ve got some stuff stashed away at my place.  But Sir Stephen… he’s gonna need his own gear.”  She didn’t doubt he’d be a quick study with a gun, but he’d do _better_ fighting in the way he was trained.

            “How are we going to get it?” Carter asked, as the elevator doors opened.  “We can’t just walk in there and ask for it.  I seem to remember a conversation about how not even the _Queen_ can do that.”

            “I am Russian spy, remember?” asked Nat, deliberately using an exaggerated accent.  “I’ll get the shield before we leave here, and the rest of the gear in Inverness – and before you ask, I won’t get caught.”  They headed through the front door and down the steps to the car park.

            Allen Jones cleared his throat.  “I can shoot,” he said.  “I go duck hunting, remem… I mean, I go duck hunting,” he repeated.

            It occurred to Nat that in the alternate reality that existed in this man’s head, he might very well have been the one who taught her to use a gun.  Had the two of them bonded by sitting in blinds together on wet autumn days, sharing hot chocolate and body heat while they waited for a bird to get within range?  The mental picture was sweet.  That was why people preferred the beautiful lies, Nat thought.  They were just so much more comfortable than the ugly truths hiding behind them.

            In any case, so long as there was a ghost of a chance that Zola either _was_ Allen Jones or had created him to mess with her, Nat wasn’t going to trust the man with a gun.  “We’ll see,” she said.

            Getting Sir Stephen’s shield back was no problem at all.  After Dr. Hughes had left for the evening, Nat simply picked a couple of locks, slipped into the lab, and cracked the safe.  The shield was wrapped in plastic to keep it isolated from other sources of DNA, and for a moment Nat felt a pang of regret.  She’d wanted to be _done_ with things like destroying evidence and hiding the truth, and yet here she was doing exactly that, even if not for the reasons she might once have.  Maybe if she thought of this as serving the _concept_ of Truth rather than protecting any one truth in particular.  After all, at the rate they were going, it might not be long before the word ‘truth’ was entirely meaningless.

            She unwrapped the plastic to look at the shield itself.  The stone replica that had appeared as part of the statue had been huge and thick and looked like it must weigh a ton.  The real thing, though of the same dimensions, was feather-light.  Its leather skin had been painted blue and white, with a star in the centre.  Silver-plated rivets around the edge and an embellished boss in the middle, both just barely beginning to tarnish, held the leather in place, and on the back were two straps for the bearer’s arm, fixed to a wooden strut.  The Norse sagas, Nat recalled, described shields like this as being made out of linden wood.  Was this one the same, or had the Lady of the Lake provided Sir Stephen with something else entirely?

            Before she left the Life Sciences building, Natasha did one more thing.  She stopped by the office to slide a bubble envelope into Dr. Hughes mail slot – inside were two swabs with DNA samples, and a short note asking for a paternity test whenever she might have the time.  At this point it was a little hard to believe that science would actually have any answers for Nat, but _part_ of an answer would do.

            The others were waiting in the car park outside Whitehall Theatre across the street.  Nat joined them there, and then presented the shield to Sir Stephen.  It felt like an oddly ceremonial moment, standing there holding this medieval object out in both hands – and Sir Stephen only reinforced that impression when he reached out hungrily for it, then held it at arm’s length to look at it, as though it were a long-lost love.

            “Thank you,” he said gravely, and put it on his arm.

            Natasha did a bit of a double-take, as if she had to check and make _sure_ he was still dressed in jeans and a windbreaker that belonged to Dr. Wilson, still had a little bald patch where the surgeons at Raigmore had sewn up the now invisible gash in his face.  He was, and he did, and yet for some reason it didn’t matter.  With that shield on his arm, Sir Stephen of Rogsey was a _warrior_.

            “Next stop, Six Burnett Road,” said DI Carter as they all climbed back into the rental car.  “I’m really not looking forward to submitting my case report on this one.”

            “Not quite yet,” Nat said.  “I told you, we have to stop by my place first.”

            “Are you okay with coming along?” Dr. Wilson asked Allen Jones.  “You didn’t exactly sign up for this, and I have a feeling we’re about to break some laws we didn’t even know existed.”

            Jones shrugged.  “If I don’t exist, they’ll have a hard time prosecuting me,” he pointed out.

            “That’s one way to look at it,” Wilson said, but it was hard to tell whether he were interpreting the statement as a joke – or indeed, if Jones had meant it as one. 

* * *

 

            Natasha’s flat in Dundee could be entered directly from the street, which was one of the reasons she’d chosen it – it made it much easier to get in and out at odd hours of the night without disturbing the neighbours.  It was certainly very useful now, when she didn’t want to have to explain why she, normally a loner, had four people with her.  She turned on the light, and glanced over her shoulder to see how her companions would react to what they saw – a very ordinary-looking kitchen with yellowed linoleum, a bouquet of dusty fake daffodils on the table and a slightly shabby poster of Degas' _La Classe de Danse_ on the wall.  They looked a little disappointed.

            “If you don’t think it looks like somewhere a spy on the run would live, that’s kind of the whole point,” Nat said.  She leaned over the sink to shut the blinds, then began to pull the fridge out from the wall to access the hidden compartment behind it.

            “Need some help with that?” asked Jones.

            “No,” said Nat.  She got it out far enough to slip in behind it, where she unplugged the fridge from the outlet and opened a hidden door to reveal a row of meticulously maintained Soviet assault rifles.

            “I’m guessing you don’t have a license for those,” Carter observed, as Nat began pulling things out.

            “You can arrest me later,” Nat told her.  She handed the first rifle to Dr. Wilson, who immediately began checking it – his military training made that the natural thing to do.  Natasha nodded approvingly and grabbed a second rifle for Carter.

            “Is all that really necessary?” asked Jones, watching with huge eyes.  He must be wondering what his little girl had gotten herself into.

            “We’re in a race against time with a guy who can blow up a building with his mind,” Nat replied.  “I don’t think there’s such a thing as over-prepared.”  She grabbed a third gun for herself, then a fourth in case one of the others were lost or broken, and began piling up boxes of ammunition.  “I’ve got a red and black sports bag in the bedroom closet,” she said.  “Somebody want to go find it for me?”

            “I know the one you mean,” said Jones.  “I’ll get it.”

            “It’s the door on the…” Nat began, but he’d already left the room, as if he knew exactly where he was going.  Sure enough, a moment later he was back, with the bag in his hands.  He’d known where to find it, she thought, because he’d been here before.  That was what she’d _told_ people when she taken the flat, that she didn’t need help moving because her father was flying over with her stuff.

            “Here you go.”  He held it out.

            “Thanks,” she said.  Nat unzipped the bag and opened the pockets she’d sewn into the bottom to hold weapons and ammo.  “You guys can have something to eat if you want.  I’m gonna pack a few other things before we head out.”  Who knew when, or even _if_ , she’d be back again.

            “What kind of other things?” Carter asked, suspicious.

            “Clothes,” said Natasha dryly.  “Toothpaste.  Tampons.  That kind of thing.”

            Carter nodded.  “I guess even Russian spies need those.”

            Nat did her packing, trying to keep in mind that even in the summer, the Orkney Islands were likely to be cold and stormy.  As she did, she began to be able to smell something oniony.  Somebody must be cooking.  She finished putting her things in the bag and then went into the kitchen to see who it was and whether there were enough for everybody.

            Dr. Wilson was the one cutting up vegetables, but it was Allen Jones who had pasta on the stove and was giving Carter a list of things to find in the freezer.

            “You’re cooking?” asked Nat.

            “I figured I might as well do _something_ useful while I’m here,” said Jones.  “Do you like spaghetti?”

            The hopeful way he said it made her want to grit her teeth.  He _wanted_ Nat to like spaghetti, because he was looking for something in her of the daughter he remembered.  Or maybe he was trying to win her over with an offer of food, to say _see, I_ can _be your father!_   Nat didn’t know which possibility was worse.

            “It depends on the spaghetti,” said Nat.  “I’ll give it a try.  Let me wash my hands and I’ll be right in to help.”  Getting directly involved would be the easiest way to make sure she could intervene if it turned out to be a plot to kill them all or something.  So, for that matter, was washing her hands – Nat kept her poisons under the bathroom sink, and she wanted to make sure they hadn’t been touched by this man who seemed to know where everything was in her home.

            The poisons were still there, all in their jars disguised as household cleaning products.  Nat cleaned up and returned to the kitchen.

            As far as she could tell, the spaghetti was just spaghetti.  Sir Stephen sat carefully cleaning up the silver bits on his shield with Nat’s jewelry polish while the rest of them finished cooking and set the table, and then they all sat down to what felt like the most awkward family dinner in the world.

            “Do you like it?” Jones asked anxiously as everybody tasted the food.

            It was fairly bland, actually.  The sort of food a man who’d never been properly taught to cook might learn how to make for himself and his daughter after his wife died.  Sir Stephen dug in with the same appetite he’d brought to everything.  Everybody else ate more slowly, and while the food wasn’t particularly _good_ , it was certainly edible.  It wasn’t unlike what Nat herself could make, on the rare occasions she cooked for herself.

            “I’m not much of a cook,” Jones said, and confirmed Nat’s suspicious by adding, “after Kathy got sick, I started to realize that Natalie and I couldn’t have McDonald’s _every_ night.  I actually went and took a cooking class at night school and I only just _barely_ passed it.  We never had gourmet fare but I’d like to hope I at least managed to get all four food groups in on a regular basis.”  He looked at Nat, hoping for some kind words.

            “It’s all right,” she said grudgingly.  She could see his disappointment, but she just couldn’t let him nurse those illusions.  It was awful to think that he had this entire lifetime in his head that had never happened, in which he could show up in Natasha’s office and say _hi, Ginger Snap_ , and she would run into his arms.

            “I guess as long as we can eat it,” said Jones, disappointed.

            “So,” Dr. Wilson spoke up, apparently just for the sake of changing the subject.  “Are we going back to Inverness tonight, or tomorrow morning?”

            “It had better be tonight,” Nat replied.  “I don’t think we can afford to waste any time.”

            “I don’t know about that,” said Dr. Wilson.  “I’m exhausted and I bet you all are, too.  Who’s gonna do the driving?”

            That was a good question.  Nat could go for days without sleep but that didn’t mean she _liked_ it.  Sir Stephen, being slightly superhuman, could probably do the same, but he didn’t know how to drive and they didn’t have time to teach him.  Carter and Wilson were probably both used to going without sleep because of their professions, but they hadn’t been _trained_ to it like Natasha had.  “I guess it’ll have to…” she began.

            “I’ll do it,” Jones volunteered.  “I slept on the plane on the way over, and my internal clock is still on New York time.  It’s only three in the afternoon for me.”

            He was trying _really_ hard to ingratiate himself, Nat observed.  “That just means you’re jetlagged, and that’ll make you _more_ tired,” she said.  “I can stay awake.”

            “ _I’ll_ drive,” said Carter firmly.  “I’ve always been a night owl.  It’s useful in my line of work.”  She looked from Nat to Jones and back again, daring them to argue with her.

            “Okay,” said Nat.

            “Okay,” Jones nodded.

            “Sounds good,” said Dr. Wilson. 

* * *

 

            As they washed up the dishes and put everything away, Nat was still planning to stay awake and keep an eye on Jones on the trip to Inverness.  Once she was actually in the car, however, with the soothing hum of the engines and the warm bodies of Sir Stephen and Dr. Wilson on each side of her, the stress of the past few days quickly started to take over.  She didn’t even realize she’d fallen asleep until she woke up with a start as the car went over a bump in the road.  The stars were out now, and the men on either side of her were either sleeping or trying to sleep.  Carter and Jones in the front seat, however, were awake, and carrying on a conversation in very soft voices, trying not to disturb any of the passengers.

            “I don’t know,” DI Carter was saying, with a quiet sigh.  “I don’t _want_ to believe I’m watching fantasies come to life, but I saw it with my own eyes.  I _saw_ her double turn into that little troll, I _saw_ the hospital collapse for no reason, I _saw_ that stupid monster slither up on land to get its baby back.  I have to follow the leads wherever they take me, and right now they’re taking me someplace where ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ aren’t as distinct as I always thought.”

            “What does that mean for _me_ , then?” Jones asked forlornly.  “Am I going to just vanish when you find this guy and set things right?”

            Nat hadn’t thought of that.  She hadn’t thought this situation could possibly get any creepier.

            “I don’t know,” Carter repeated.  “This is all new ground for me, too.  I _hope_ you and Sir Steve don’t just disappear.  You seem like nice guys, even if Sir Steve takes everything way too seriously.”

            “At least I know that Natalie… Natalie won’t miss me,” Jones said, with a catch in his voice.  Not _quite_ tears, but definitely a moment of uncontained emotion.  Good lord, Nat thought, what an awful thing to try to take comfort from.

            She shut her eyes again and breathed evenly, trying to pretend she was still sleeping.  Another beautiful lie… better than the ugly truth of her eavesdropping.  After all this time, she was still, essentially, a spy. 

* * *

 

            Although it was very late by the time they arrived in the Inverness city centre, the Ness Bridge and the Castle were lit up as if there were some kind of public event going on.  Floodlights had been set up along the embankments above the river, and people were standing on them and on the bridge with binoculars, watching a group of Loch Ness monsters that had crawled up on a grassy bank to rest.  Two of the three adults were curled up sleeping, while a third was lying on its side to allow twin pups to nurse.  Traffic on the bridge itself had slowed to a crawl, as travelers leaned out their windows and craned their necks for a better view.

            “I wonder what kind of theories people are coming up with to explain why they just suddenly _exist_ now,” said Dr. Wilson.  “I don’t think anybody can believe they were there all along and we just never noticed them.  Not when they do stuff like that.”

            “Humans are very good at rationalizing things,” said Nat.  “They’ll think of something.”

            She wondered whether the _monsters_ would just vanish when this was all over.  That would be less weird than it happening to Sir Stephen and Allen Jones, but a lot of people would still be terribly disappointed.

            DI Carter and Dr. Wilson both wanted to pack a little, too, before they continued on, so they split into two groups to do so: Sir Stephen and Wilson went to the doctor’s place, and Natasha and Carter went to Carter’s flat to get her things.  Allen waited in the car while the women went inside to pack clothes and toiletries, and to grab some sandwiches and sodas for the road.

            “Hey, uh, Natalie?” Carter called from the bathroom.

            “Yes, Sharon?” asked Nat, wrapping sandwiches in the kitchen.  Apparently they were on a first-name basis now.

            “Have you thought at all about what might happen to Sir Steve and your Dad after we’re done with this Zola character?” she asked.

            So the question was weighing on _her_ mind, too.  “You mean, will they disappear or something?” Nat said.

            “Yeah, something like that.”

            “I have no idea,” Nat confessed.  “This is… I’m a spy, not a sorceress.  This is monsters and magic and nothing _I_ was ever trained for.”

            “Yeah, me, either,” Sharon agreed.  She came out of the bathroom, closing her overnight case.  “Do you think you’ll… that is…” she frowned, trying to find the right words.  “Did you always want a father or something?”

            Nat shook her head.  “I don’t think so.  Maybe I sort of did, because I was raised mostly by women, but if you’re asking whether I’m planning to bond with him, the answer is _no_.  Even if I wanted a father, I don’t trust him.”  The very idea of letting herself fall into that fantasy was ridiculous, even insulting, no matter how tempting it might be.

            “You don’t?” asked Sharon.  “You trust Sir Steve, and he came from the same place.  We think.”

            “I’m not so sure I do trust Sir Steve,” Nat said.  “It’s been a long time since I actually trusted _anyone_.  Even if Sir Steve does believe he’s… well, Sir Steve, _real_ medieval knights weren’t actually the shining heroic figures the troubadour poetry would have us believe.”  Then again, Sir Stephen himself was a character right out of one of those poems, which meant… Nat didn’t know what it means.  What a headache this whole mess was!

            They met back up with the men, and then went to retrieve the rest of Sir Stephen’s armor and weaponry.  This was a little more complicated than getting the shield back from Hughes had been.  Despite the late hour, the police station was buzzing.  Sharon took the chief aside for a word, and learned that since the station itself was currently a crime scene and had to be isolated, they’d been obliged to rent a storage locker to keep their evidence in.

            “He says it’s being guarded around the clock by three armed men,” she said, “so I shouldn’t need to worry.  He also asked where I’ve been, and I told him the truth – I’m following a lead to meet with the man who kidnapped Alexander Pierce.”

            “So we’re not going to get it, is what you’re saying,” said Sam.

            “She didn’t say that,” Nat corrected.

            “Three guys around a little storage unit?” Sam asked.

            “I can do that,” Nat assured him.

            She could, too – by cutting her way in through the locker on the other side.  Getting the sword, helmet, dagger, and chainmail out without making a sound was tough, but nothing compared to smuggling eight million Euros worth of lost Nazi gold out of Miskolc.

Back in the car, she presented the bundle to Sir Stephen, and he went through it item by item, making sure everything was still there.  Most of it was caked with blood from whatever it was Zola had done to poor Lipscomb, but a little water would take it off the metal.  They went to a petrol station with a self car wash, and rinsed it all down with a hose.  As Sir Stephen held up his scabbard to inspect the decorated leather for any additional blood, Nat noticed something dangling from the belt.  It was a little iron cross, with a gold bead at the top.

            “What is that?” Nat asked, pointing to it.

            Sir Stephen turned the scabbard over to see what she was talking about.  “A pendant.  Buckeye took it from one of the Red Death’s followers after a fight.  Others among them seemed quite determined that we should not have it, so we fought hard for it, and took it away with us.”

            Natasha reached into the inner pocket of her jacket for the matching one.  “I pulled this one off Zola when he vanished in the police station.”  The two were not quite identical, but nothing made by hand in the early middle ages ever would be.  What _did_ startle her was that the metal seemed significantly rustier than it had yesterday.  Had she accidentally exposed it to something?  “Is it magic?” she asked, remembering the shock it had given her.

            Then she remembered the _timing_ of the shock, and felt a chill as another piece of the nonsensical puzzle suddenly clicked into place.

            “I know not,” said Sir Stephen.  “If so, its magic was never any use to us.”

            Nat swallowed.  “It gave me a shock earlier,” she said.  “When I… when I was talking about my father on the phone with Sue.  I guess it was about ten o’clock in the morning Scotland time.”  She looked at Jones.  Could it be that this tiny object had _created_ him?

            “That would be… five in the morning, New York time,” said Jones.  He shrugged.  “I was on a plane, fast asleep.”

            Nat had hoped he’d remember something significant happening at that time, but she supposed if somebody were going to simply pop into being, in their sleep was probably the best way to do it without disturbing themselves or anyone around them.

            “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Sharon warned.  “Correlation does not imply causation.  Can you prove it?”

            “Not without trying to make it do it again,” said Nat – if that were even possible.  Did the rust mean it was out of batteries, or the magical equivalent?

            “I think we’ve had enough of that,” Sam observed.

            Nat had to agree.  “We probably couldn’t, anyway,” she said.  “Our theory is that it only works when somebody _believes_ in the lie, and how are we supposed to make each other believe in lies when we all _know_ that’s what we’d be trying to do?”

            “So what do we do about it, then?” asked Sharon.

            “I guess we have to leave it on the back burner for now,” said Nat.  She didn’t like that much, either.  “And be very, very careful with these.”  She decided to wrap the two pendants up in one of the empty sandwich bags before putting them back in her purse.  She wasn’t sure if that would actually _help_ , but it seemed unlikely to make things worse.

            “Where is my gambeson?” Sir Stephen asked.

            That brought Nat back to what they were actually _doing_ , rather than their philosophical problems.  She knew what a _gambeson_ was – a quilted tunic worn under a suit of armor or chainmail to help absorb blows.  There had been one in the rubbish bag where the police were storing Sir Stephen’s things, but it hadn’t been in any shape for further use.  “It was soaked right through with blood,” Nat explained.  “You couldn’t wear it like that, and we’d get some pretty strange looks if we tried to take it to the dry cleaner.”

            “I cannot wear my coat of mail over anything so slight as this ‘tee-shirt’,” Sir Stephen protested.

            “We’ll find you something else,” Sam told him. 

* * *

 

            Despite their determination to move on as quickly as possible, they ended up staying the night in Inverness anyway.  In the morning, they went to a sporting goods store, and there they found the perfect thing – a padded compression shirt for rugby, made appropriately enough by UnderArmor.  Then, now packed and having had at least a bit of sleep on beds and sofas in Carter’s and Wilson’s homes, they hit the road again.  With Natasha back at the wheel, they headed north on the A9, with the intention of going as far as they could on land.  The best place to stop according to the maps they consulted was a tiny coastal town on Gill’s Bay, from which they could charter a boat or plane to Flotta.  It was daylight this time with everybody awake, so they could pass the trip in normal, non-whispered conversation.

            “You said your friend Buckeye took that pendant from one of the Red Death’s followers?” Natasha asked Sir Stephen on their way out of town.

            He thought about it.  “Do you want a simple answer?” he asked.  “Or the full tale?”

            “Oh, let him tell the whole thing,” said Sam eagerly.

            “I don’t mind,” Sharon agreed.  She had clearly enjoyed the story about Sir Stephen, Buckeye, and the abandoned catapult.

            It was Natasha’s answer that Sir Stephen was waiting for, though.  She shrugged.  “We’ve got lots of time,” she said.  “You might as well.”

            “I want to hear it,” said Jones.

            “Very well,” said Sir Stephen.  “I told you as far as King Harold granting me a knighthood.  This next piece of the story begins upon our return to Lady Margaret's keep at Cartaster.”


	9. The Wicker Man

            “After we reunited with Lady Margaret and the King,” Sir Stephen explained, “Buckeye and myself took the men we’d rescued back to the keep at Cartaster for rest and the attentions of a physician.  The King offered his own doctors for them, in fact – many had been beaten and few had eaten properly, but all we at least alive.  Sir Michael of Cartaster was a singular case.  Otherwise they treated their prisoners as men of value, although many of them were not.”

            The prisoners had in fact been a very odd assortment.  Sir Stephen had expected Saxon Englishmen, and there were a few of those, such as Sir Timothy the Drunkard.  There was also, however, the Norman Sir Francis, and other men from even further afield, Moors and Asiatics who spoke with strange accents.  Some were fighters, others merchants or scholars, but all of a similar age and in good health.  It was a bit of a mystery – the knights could be ransomed back to their families, but it was unclear why the Red Death would keep some of the others.

            “Strangest of all,” Sir Stephen said, “there was one of the Red Death’s own countrymen, a man known as Henrich the Potter.  He told us that he had risen in his master’s favour to quite an exalted position of trust, only to fall again after he realized what the Red Death was planning.  He had been imprisoned so that he could not go to William the Bastard with what he knew, and he suspected more strongly than any of them that they were all bound for some horrible fate.  It was he who told us of the Grail.”

            “I thought it was the nuns at Saint What’s-Her-Name who told you about that,” Sam said.

            “They told us the _truth_ of the Grail,” Sir Stephen corrected.  “This man knew little about it.  He believed, as we did at the time, that it was the cup of Christ.  He did know, however, that the Red Death wanted to find it, and claimed that the man who possessed it would have the power to bring about Judgment Day and usher in a new kingdom afterwards.  In the Red Death’s eyes, the Bastard’s ambition to be King of England was far too humble.  The Romance one ruled all of Europe.  Why should the Vikings, who were both the Bastard’s ancestor’s and the Red Death’s, not do the same?”

            Nat thought about to what Pierce had said the day she’d met him.  _The Vikings were where it all began_.  Pierce must have been an instigator in all this, she decided.  Somehow he’d learned this version of the story, or something similar to it, and had found a way to blur reality and fiction in order to bring it to life.  _How_?  Was it magic after all?  It was hard to imagine another explanation.

            “Isn’t that supposed to be part of God’s plan, though?” Sharon asked.  “I mean… I’m not that religious, but that’s in the Book of Revelation, right?  Judgment Day and God’s kingdom afterwards?”

            “That is what the Lady Margaret asked him,” said Sir Stephen.  “He replied that the Red Death would not institute God’s kingdom, but his own.  As this Heinrich spoke to us, he began to grow weak and ill.  Finally foam bubbled up from his mouth and his voice was stopped in his throat, and by the time we summoned the physician for him it was too late.  Some enchantment had taken hold, and he was dead in front of us.”

            Having seen all this, King Harold decided very sensibly that something was going to have to be done about it.  The Grail must be somewhere in the British Isles, since Sir Galahad had been able to find it there, so he ordered Sir Stephen to go find it before the Red Death could.

            “I swore myself to the task without hesitation,” said Sir Stephen, “for I realized that such was the destiny for which the Lady of the Lake had chosen me.  The men I found in the cave, having already seen the horrors the Red Death was capable of, declared that they would follow me, even those who were themselves Normans.  And Buckeye…”

            Sir Stephen paused, but only for dramatic effect.  He was smiling fondly.  “Buckeye said he had no need of Sir Stephen of Rogsey.  He had followed the sickly child Stephen all over the Abbey’s lands on a thousand quests, and had known no braver companion.  He would continue to follow that child wherever I might lead him.”

            With a royal blessing – and a good deal of royal _money_ – for their quest, Sir Stephen and his new friends had been left with the same problem as their twenty-first century successors.  It was all well and good to decide they were going to look for the Holy Grail, if they only knew where to start.  They’d reviewed the stories and learned that the Grail’s keeper in King Arthur’s time was the Fisher King, whose land was supposed to be somewhere in Wales.  Wales therefore seemed a good place to start, but just to be sure, they decided to go back to the Lady of the Lake’s pond and see if they could get some more divine assistance.

            “I had hoped the pool might seem more impressive by daylight,” said Sir Stephen, “but it was as small and muddy as I remembered it, and though I waded into the water to my waist and spent long, chill hours in prayer, there was no response.  I understood then that I could expect no more help from the Lady, and we went instead to the coast.  We hoped that we might find a ship to take us North, avoiding a long and difficult journey over land.  After a day of travel, we came upon a town the coastal raiders had spared, and there on the beach was what could only be a sign from God!”  He beamed.

            “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” said Nat.  “What was it?”

            “It was a whale, of course!” Sir Stephen replied.  “A great fish lying in the surf, too exhausted and in water too shallow to return to the deep under its own power.  We all agreed that this was a sign, indeed – a whale to guide us to Wales!  Though weak, it still lived, and we set about to return it to the water in the expectation that it would guide us on our way.”

            Sir Stephen was supernaturally strong, but even he and all his companions pushing together hadn’t been enough to roll fifty tonnes of dying cetacean back down the beach.  So they’d gotten ropes and pulleys from the town and some posts out of an abandoned house, and had rigged them up to _drag_ the poor animal to the water.

            “The entire population turned out to help,” he went on, “for they had been sore afraid that the monster on their shores was a sign of some disaster to come.  Even if it did not bring pirates down on them, once dead it would stink most terribly or even burst as it decayed.  The ropes cut deeply into its flesh, until the blood ran in rivers, but after extraordinary effort we pulled it out far enough that it could rise on the tide, and there it swam away.”

            “Well, congratulations!” Sam said with a grin.  “Was that the world’s first whale rescue?  And more important, did you taste its blood and learn to speak whale?”

            “Alas, no,” said Sir Stephen, “and it seemed at first that the whale was not meant to be our guide in the literal sense, because rather than wait for us to set out and follow it, it simply swam out to sea and vanished, leaving us disappointed on the beach.”

            The whale might not have been very grateful, but the townsfolk were.  They’d concluded that God had sent Sir Stephen and his companions to get rid of the whale for them, and were more than happy to lend the group a boat.  The company put out to the north with everyone in high spirits, but that didn’t last long once the sky began to cloud over and the boat began to pitch.  Sir Stephen’s life had begun with a storm at sea, as his mother’s little fishing boat was driven south by the winds.  Now he and the others were blown further north, right past Wales and out into the Irish Sea.  When the weather finally calmed there was nothing but open water in every direction, and they didn’t know which way to go.

            “Then there was a great splash of salt spray,” said Sir Stephen.  “We ran to the side of the vessel to see from whence it came, and there we saw the whales, easily a dozen of them, leaping from the water and falling into it again as if they were jumping for joy.  None of them had the rope marks that _our_ whale would have borne, but we still felt they must have come to guide us.  We took out the oars and rowed towards them, and though the beasts disappeared back into the deep when they saw us coming, we soon reached shore on the Isle of Anglesey.  There, as you may already know, was the last stronghold of the druids.”

            Natasha didn’t know very much about the druids.  Her supposed area of expertise was architecture of the high middle ages – druids were at least a thousand years too early for her, but that also made them a good thousand years too early for Sir Stephen.  The Roman empire had slaughtered the druid priests and burned down their sacred oak trees, and the religion as a whole had been pretty much extinct by the end of the first century AD.  There were a few cranks who believed that practicing druids had survived long enough to be burned as witches in the sixteenth century, but most serious historians found that extremely unlikely.  Modern-day ‘druids’ were just people in bedsheets acting out an eighteenth-century fantasy.

            Before she could say so, however, she stopped herself again.  The world didn’t work that way anymore, Nat reminded herself.  She couldn’t say that one thing was necessarily true and another necessarily false.  The fantastic could become real at a moment’s notice.  If she needed proof, there was Allen Jones in the back seat.

            So rather than protest historical inaccuracy, she told Sir Stephen, “go on.”

            “The druids made us welcome,” Sir Stephen said, “for they had word from the demons they served that a conqueror was to arrive, who would take up the Grail and unite the world under the rule of a single king.  They thought this man would bring back the old religions of the Celts and Vikings, and that Odin and his Queen would walk the earth again.  Not knowing what this conqueror would look like, they assumed it was I, for my followers included men from far corners of the world.  I wanted to correct them, but the Lady Margaret and Buckeye persuaded me otherwise.  We must pretend for a while, Lady Margaret said, and learn.”

            They sat down to a meal at which the druids served no meat, and Sir Stephen let Lady Margaret do most of the talking because he knew _he_ was terrible at lying.  “It came, I suppose, of growing up in the Abbey, where if I lied about something I knew I must confess the lie on Sunday.”  He chuckled.  “There seemed little point in learning when a lie could never last me longer than week!

            “While we ate,” he went on, “the druids spoke horrors of the grand new world that would be made, in which they would again be the rulers of their people, and would be allowed to offer their terrible gifts to the pagan gods.  You know, of course,” Sir Stephen added ominously, “of what gifts they spoke.”

            “No, I…” Jones began.

            Nat cut him off.  “The Romans slaughtered the druids because they believed they practiced human sacrifices,” she explained.  Scholars were divided on whether this had been true or just a convenient excuse for genocide.  For the moment, she supposed it was true if Sir Stephen said it was.

            “Like _The Wicker Man_ ,” Sam agreed.  “ _Not the bees!  Not the bees!_ ”

            “Nice,” giggled Sharon, referring to his Nicolas Cage impression.

            The joke was lost on Sir Stephen, though, who simply kept talking.  “The Wicker Man, precisely.  The druids then said that before they could assist me with the gift of the map that was key to the Grail’s location, they must be sure I was the one promised to them.  In correspondence the Red Death had said he was bringing victims representing the many lands he would rule, and in that moment I understood why the bandits had kept their captives alive in those caves on the beach.  Saxons, Normans, Moors and Orientals… the Red Death meant to let the druids burn them all alive, so that their gods would grant him power over those peoples.”

            Natasha had seen men burned alive, though not in those circumstances.  She shivered.

            “What did you do?” asked Sharon.  “I mean, you still needed the map.”

            “We did,” said Sir Stephen, “but there was no rule that said it had to be taken as a gift rather than as a spoil.  I turned over the table, spilling all the bread and beans onto the floor, and with my sword I took off the hierophant’s head!”

            There followed a bizarre battle between the druids, wielding their magic, and Sir Stephen’s men with their swords and spears.  The druids had enchanted daggers that made men explode in showers of blood, and could summon lightning down from the sky.  Armor was no help against either, but Sir Stephen’s magical shield was, and soon they’d all been huddled behind it, trying to get back to their boat on the beach while the druids’ followers fired arrows tipped with poisonous mistletoe.

            “We reached the harbour,” Sir Stephen said, “but there we found ourselves pinned between the druids and the Red Death, whose ship had just put in.  We could not fight on two fronts at the same time, and soon we were all in chains.  I took a blow to the spine that paralyzed my legs, and I could only lie helpless on the sand while the Red Death stood over me, laughing.  He told me his kobold could follow us invisibly, and by its whisperings he knew all our counsels.”

            That was how Zola had known the shield would be at Hughes’ lab, Natasha realized.  He must have been sitting there, invisible, the entire time she was on the phone – the scrape of gravel had happened when he moved.  He probably _had_ activated whatever magic was in that pendant.  They were going to have to be much more careful, and they would clearly have to get rid of Zola before they stood any chance of outwitting the Red Death himself.

            “You spoke of the Rite of the Wicker Man,” said Sir Stephen, nodding to Sam.  “Though in my time bees were not a part of it.  The druids imprisoned us all within it, our weapons and armor spread at its feet as a further offering, and the hierophant called upon his gods as he set it alight.

            “Yet even as I began to feel the flames, I found I was able to move my legs again.  I broke my bonds and burst out, my tunic still ablaze, to scoop up my sword and shield.  The druids scattered in terror, and I duelled the Red Death by sword while Buckeye and Lady Margaret escaped from the wicker cage before helping the others to do likewise.  Though we all suffered burns, myself more than any of the others, we killed several of the Red Death’s men and escaped.  We had our lives, but we did not have the map.”

            Safely back on the boat, they’d decided that all they could do now was tail the Red Death.  He would follow the map, so they would follow _him_ and try to take the Grail from him when he found it.

            “It was in that fight that Sir James took the pendant from one of the Red Death’s followers,” Sir Stephen said, “and it was in that fight that I began to doubt the Grail.  How could something so sacred have landed in the guardianship of heathens and murderers?  Could it be that the Grail was not what the legends said?”  He sighed.  “I did not dare to believe it, though.  I recoiled from the ugly truth, and clung instead to the beautiful lies.”

            “And that was where you guys got the pendant,” Nat said, bringing the point back to what they’d wanted to know in the first place.

            “Yes,” said Sir Stephen.  “Buckeye took it off a man he killed, and kept it as a trophy.  We wondered if it were significant, but there was no-one we could ask.”

            That figured.  “It never made anything come true for you guys?” asked Nat.

            “I fear not,” Sir Stephen said.  “For if _we_ had the power to turn our fantasies to reality, we would have found the Grail, and spared ourselves much trouble and pain.” 

* * *

            The further north they went, the more _Scottish_ the landscape became.  There were fewer trees, more rocks, colder winds, and damper mists.  It was enough to make Natasha wonder why the English had spent most of the middle ages trying to conquer this place.  The Romans had certainly known better – they’d built Hadrian’s Wall specifically to keep Scotland _out_.

            And the little town they found at the northern tip _definitely_ didn’t look like a place anyone would bother to conquer.  It was a tiny cluster of buildings around a small natural harbour, with a sign that claimed a population of sixty-five people.  Sea and sky here were both a foreboding shade of slate gray, the former heavily overcast and the latter leaping onto the stony shoreline in showers of spray.  It was a deeply unfriendly landscape, and the human presence resembled a cluster of barnacles on a rock, clinging as tightly as it could so as not to get blown away.

            The people in the town were hospitable enough, though, and it didn’t take Nat and the others long to find a man who was willing to let them hire his boat.  Looking at this fellow, Natasha wondered if _he_ might be a fantasy brought to life, because he was the perfect image of a Salty Old Sea Dog.  He had white hair and a steel-gray moustache, and he wore a cable-knit sweater, a pair of battered aviator sunglasses, and a peaked cap with the name _Stan_ embroidered across the front.

            “Not that I’m gonna turn down a few bob,” he said, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth as he went through a drawer for some papers, “but if you’re going to Orkney, why don’t you take the ferry?”

            “Because we’re not going to Orkney,” Nat replied.  “We’re going directly to Flotta, and directly back.”

            “Flotta?” asked the Sea Dog.  “What do you want in Flotta?  Ain’t nobody up there but the refinery.”

            “That’s not quite true,” said Natasha.  She opened her mouth to give him an explanation, and then yet again stopped short.  Nat was good at lies and she’d prepared quite a reasonable story about exactly why they wanted to go to Flotta and what they would be doing there.  Now, however, she looked at Allen Jones out of the corner of her eye, and her words stuck in her throat.  In this world they found themselves in, a plausible lie was a very dangerous thing.  Yet if she told the _truth_ , the Sea Dog would think they were all crazy.  What should she do?

            Apparently she took too long to make up her mind, because Sir Stephen answered for her.  “We are on a quest,” he said, “begun many a century ago.”

            The Sea Dog grinned.  “I see!  Well, he who’d cross the Pentland Firth must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see!”  He found the paper he’d been looking for, photocopied it by, so far as Nat could tell, faxing it to himself, and pulled a pen out of an old tin on his desk.

            “ _What_ ,” he said, pointing the pen at Sir Stephen, “is your name?”

            “Sir Stephen of Rogsey!” the man replied.

            “ _What_ … is your quest?” asked the Sea Dog.

            Sir Stephen glanced at the others, found no objections, and said, “we seek the Holy Grail!”

            Sam pretended to cough so nobody would hear him snickering.  Nat thought she’d better intervene before Sir Stephen realized he was being made fun of, but Sam caught her sleeve and shook his head.  He wanted to see what happened next.

            “And _what_ … is the airspeed of a laden swallow?” the Sea Dog demanded.

            Sir Stephen frowned.  “I beg your pardon?”

            “African swallow?” asked Allen Jones.  “Or European?”

            “You’re not allowed to answer for him!” protested the Sea Dog.

            “Actually,” Natasha spoke up, “in the movie nobody ever _tried_ to answer for somebody else, so we don’t actually know that it’s against the rules.”

            “No,” said Sam, “they _each_ had to answer three questions, so…”

            “Are we going to Flotta today or next week?” Sharon interrupted.

            “Sorry, sorry,” said the Sea Dog, a grin on his face.  “All right, for real this time, I need your names and the reason for your trip.”

            Nat gritted her teeth.  It was time to just lie and hope for the best – maybe they’d be okay if more of the people present _disbelieved_ it than _believed_ it.  “I’m Dr. Natalie Jones,” she said.  “I’m an archaeologist with the University of Dundee.  I’m going to Flotta to do a re-survey of Kracness Circle, prior to submitting an application to excavate.  Officer Sharon Carter is here to make sure we follow all the regulations, Dr. Samuel Wilson is in case somebody falls off a rock and breaks a leg, and my father Allen and my fiancé Steve are coming to assist me.”

            The Sea Dog wrote that down.  As he did, he glanced around at the others, who all nodded.  Sir Stephen apparently felt that something more was required, because he put a hand on Natasha’s shoulder and, with a terribly false smile, said “yes, we are to be wed!”

            Sam came perilously close to laughing aloud at that.

            “What’s in there?” the Sea Dog asked, pointing his pen at Natasha’s sports bag.

            “Surveying equipment and cameras.”  Nat crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping _that_ lie didn’t come true.

            “And when were you wanting to leave?” was the final question.

            “Time’s a-wasting!” Nat replied with a smile.

            The man chuckled.  “You mean, you don’t want to take a few hours and visit beautiful Gill’s Bay?” he asked.

            “Oh, is there a town here?” asked Sam.  “I must have blinked on the way in.”  Nat wondered if the joke were so that if anyone asked why he was snickering, Sam could say he was laughing at himself.

            The Sea Dog seemed to like it, though, and chuckled appreciatively.  “I’ll let the coast guard know, and we’ll be off,” he said.  “Sign here, all five of you.  Oh, and I don’t have one of those credit card machines, but I do accept PayPal!” 

* * *

            The trip out to Flotta took nearly two hours, and while the Sea Dog said it was a glorious day for sailing, Nat was not inclined to agree.  The sea was choppy and his boat was not large, and with the engines running full-tilt they bounced across the water like a skipping stone.  Nat didn’t actually get seasick but she still didn’t find it very comfortable, and Sir Stephen hid inside the cabin with Sharon and Allen Jones, claiming that such speed was downright unnatural.  Only Sam seemed comfortable.

            The main distinguishing feature of the island itself was its flatness – the name _Flotta_ came from the Old Norse _flodday_ , which meant ‘raft’, and referred to the fact that the land mass barely rose out of the ocean at all.  The island was shaped like a squashed letter _C_ , with two spits of land divided by a shallow bay.  At the widest point, in the middle of the _C_ , was the oil refinery, which took in and processed crude drilled from the North Sea.  On the lower peninsula was the little village where the workers lived and ate, and a couple of tiny farms that kept shaggy highland cattle.  The upper peninsula was uninhabited, and it was on the very eastern extreme of this at Kracness – _the headland of the crows_ – where the stone circle stood.

            There was an old wharf on the north side of the island, just enough of it left after sixty years of disuse for the Sea Dog to pull his boat up to it.  The group cautiously disembarked onto the waterlogged timbers, which creaked and sagged but luckily didn’t break.  Nat didn’t want to fall in the water, and she _definitely_ didn’t want to have to jump in and rescue anybody else who did.  The wind was icy, and the water probably cold enough to induce hypothermia within minutes.

            “How long you gonna be?” the Sea Dog asked, shouting to be heard over the wind.  It was roaring in their ears and whipping their hair around, and everything tasted of salt from the spray.  It would only be worse at the circle, which was on the highest point of the island.

            “All day, probably, unless the weather gets worse!” Nat shouted back.  “You got anywhere to go?”

            “If you’re paying me to wait, I’m waiting!” the Sea Dog replied.

            “Okay!” said Nat.  She wondered how much this quest was going to have _cost_ her, when all was said and done.  Depending on how much trouble they ended up going to, she might have to sell one of the Grand Duchess’ diamonds.

            They began walking up the gentle slope, heading inland.  The circle was at the top of a cliff no more than twenty feet above the sea.  Between it and them was a shell of broken stone walls in the middle of the peninsula, the remains of a building that dated from World War II.  A road had once led up from the dock to just in front of this, where it divided in two: a paved road headed west towards the refinery, and a dirt track continued up to the headland.  The heather and gorse had made good inroads on reclaiming this ground, but the course of the path could still be followed.  A few seabirds wheeled overhead as the group picked their way along, avoiding patches of nettles or thistle, and crows perched among the ruins, croaking to themselves.

            Nobody spoke.  There wasn’t any particular _reason_ why not – the place was entirely deserted, so it wasn’t as if anyone would hear them.  Kracness just didn’t seem like a good place for casual conversation.

            At the top of the slope they came to the chain link fence that surrounded the stone circle.  It had strips of plastic woven through the links, but these were ratty and flapping in the wind.  A metal sign had been fixed to the gate, with a message in both English and Scots Gaelic.

            “ _Kracness Circle_ ,” Natasha read.  “ _These prehistoric stones are listed under the Ancient Monuments Acts and are subject to the protection of those acts._ ”

            “Well, it doesn't say _no tresspassing_ ,” Sam observed.

            “You can't trespass on something nobody owns,” Sharon pointed out.

            Nat examined the padlock on the gate, and found it rusted shut.  She doubted anybody had been here since Dr. Lau did his survey in the early nineties.  The lock would have to be cut if they wanted to get in that way, and she hadn’t brought any tools for that.  Instead, she slung her bag of weapons and ammo over her shoulder, and started to climb the fence.

            Sharon and Sam followed her, and Sir Stephen would have done so, too, except that he noticed Allen Jones hanging back.

            “Are you not joining us?” he asked.

            “I’m a little old to be climbing things,” Jones replied apologetically.

            “Then climb on my back, and I shall carry you,” Sir Stephen offered.

            Jones eyed the fence skeptically.  “You really think you can do that while carrying somebody?” he asked.

            “I have the strength of ten men,” Sir Stephen promised him.  It wasn’t a boast, just a statement of fact.

            Nat reached the top and dropped down on the other side, and there she finally got a look at Kracness Circle.

            Most people, upon hearing the phrase ‘standing stones’, would picture something similar to Stonehenge – nice neat blocks and slabs put together into a simple but recognizable structure.  Kracness didn’t look like that at all.  Its stones were tall, irregular slabs, probably split along the natural grain of the rock with no attempt made to shape them.  They were up to five metres tall but no more than thirty or forty centimetres thick, and looked curiously fragile, like shards of glass or slips of paper upright on the headland.  Maybe it was the weather, but even if she hadn’t known that something ancient and terrible was buried here, Natasha would still have found this a terribly foreboding place.  The stones looked like a row of jagged teeth, and it was hard not to imagine the upper jaw suddenly smashing down on them.

            As depicted in Lau’s map, the stone at the focus had fallen down, gouging out the earth behind it as it did.  It was still lying there, its far tip just ten or fifteen centimetres above the ground.  Across from it on the long axis was the largest stone of the circle.  This one had been split vertically in two, the halves just barely separated.  Seeing this on the map, Nat had assumed it was the result of natural processes.  Standing in front of it, she realized it was deliberate – somebody had taken the two slabs that fit together and stood them just a hair apart, careful that they should not touch.  If the sun were in just the right spot, it should shine directly through the gap and cast a dagger of light onto the central slab.

            Sam tapped Natasha on the shoulder.  “What do you think?” he asked, still shouting over the wind.  “It’s gotta be under the one that fell down, right?”

            Nat turned to look at the central stone again.  The pit it had dug out when it toppled showed that its end had originally been buried nearly two metres deep.  The stone itself had not broken, so it didn’t seem likely that it had fallen all by itself.  Somebody would have had to dig it out and push it over.

            “I think you’re right!” she shouted back.

            “How do we lift it?” asked Sharon.  They’d brought shovels and picks, but it would take a machine to move that stone.

            Sir Stephen made it over the fence, and let Allen Jones down from his back.  Jones brushed himself off, and said, “how about it, Mr. Strength of Ten?”

            The others moved aside to let Sir Stephen approach the stone.  He looked it over.  “It would be at my very limit, I think!” he said, “but if this is the destiny the Lady of the Lake saw for me, then surely she would have given me the strength to do it!”  He went to the far end of the slab to get the best leverage, and squatted down to grip the edge.

            “Use the knees, not the back!” said Sam.

            Sir Stephen took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and lifted.


	10. Kracness Circle

            As one, the other four leaned in to see what Sir Stephen had uncovered – and as one, they were disappointed.  There was no sign of a Grail or any obvious place to hide one, only a thriving colony of tiny black ants, running around in a frenzy as they realized their roof had been lifted off.

            “Do those bite?” asked Sharon.  She was looking at Nat.

            “I’m an archaeologist, not a myrmecologist,” Natasha replied, mostly just to show off that she knew the proper word.

            “You’re both digging critters,” Sam pointed out.  “We thought you might know.”

            Nat’s reaction to finding an anthill on a dig site was usually just to tuck her trousers into the tops of her boots and ignore them.  “I can tell you that eighty-eight percent of all archaeologists do not bite,” she said, deadpan.

            “What about the other twelve?” he asked.

            “If you step in our trenches and leave giant modern bootprints all over our freshly-excavated twelfth-century ground level, we will definitely bite you,” she said.

            Even Sir Stephen’s miraculously enhanced muscles couldn’t hold the stone up for very long, so the rest of them backed out from under it and let him set it down again.  If they were gong to dig up the anthill, they were going to have to prop the stone up somehow.  Sir Stephen’s immediate idea was to use another one of the circle stones, but Natasha and Sharon joined forces to forbid it.

            “You think we’ve got problems with the evil wizards,” said Nat.  “The _last_ thing we want to add to that is Historic Scotland on our asses.  Those guys make the KGB look merciful.”

            “The fact that I haven’t arrested any of you yet makes me an accessory to pretty much all the illegal things we’ve done so far,” Sharon added.  “I will not be an accessory to the destruction of a World Heritage Site!”

            “I cannot stand and hold it up for hours on end!” Sir Stephen protested.

            “What about that old building we passed on the way in?” Sam asked.  “It didn’t look very world-heritage-y.  We could take some of the rubble from that.”

            They climbed back over the fence and headed down the slope for another look.  The derelict building had probably been abandoned more or less immediately after the end of whichever world war it had been built for, and no-one had looked after it since.  It was covered in lichen and grass, and the concrete walls were crumbling away in the fierce Orkney weather.  When new it must have looked much more solid than the bladelike standing stones a short walk away, but it clearly did not have their staying power.

            “What do we think?” asked Sam.

            “There’s no sign,” Natasha said.  If this place were protected, nobody had bothered to _label_ it as such, which would allow them to argue that they hadn’t known.  “If worst comes to worst, we know a lot more about what went on here during the wars than we do about the stone age.”

            Sir Stephen selected a large chunk of concrete, with rusting rebar protruding from its broken ends, and tried to lift it.  He couldn’t actually get it off the ground, but he managed to flip it over.  A half dozen of the crows swooped in to get at the worms and insects that had been living under it, while Sir Stephen grabbed the near edge and stood it up to flip it again.  He continued to progress in that way, rolling it end-over-end up the slope.

            “How are we gonna get it over the fence?” asked Sam.

            Nat caught his eye, and could tell he was thinking the same thing she was.  “We’ll have to knock the fence down,” she said.

            Sharon looked back at Sir Stephen.  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.  You okay back there, Sisyphus?  Can we help?”

            “I don’t think all of you together would have the strength to assist me,” Sir Stephen grunted.

            Nat let Sharon get ahead to go meet Allen Jones, who was waiting for them inside the fence, while she and Sam fell back to walk on either side of Sir Stephen.  As fast as he healed, he probably didn’t have to worry about strained muscles.  Nat was more afraid that if he slipped, the concrete would fall and squash him.

            He rolled the chunk over again, letting it hit the ground with a thud.  “May I ask, Natasha,” he said, “what is an _archaeologist_?”

            She was amazed he had the breath to talk with.  “It’s somebody who digs up old ruins and tombs to see what’s in them,” she explained.  “It helps us figure out how people lived and what happened in the past.”

            “Tombs?” Sir Stephen looked up at her and frowned.  “Do you not let the dead lie?”

            “Depends on the dead,” Nat said.  “If there’s somebody still around who says _hey, don’t dig up my ancestors_ , we usually leave them alone.  Usually.”  She could think of more than a few unfortunate incidents when such protests had been ignored.  “We can learn a lot from them.  What people ate, how long they lived, what they believed about the afterlife… we can find out if they moved around a lot, what diseases they suffered from…”

            “Would you not be upset to think that in a thousand years somebody might dig up _your_ bones to examine them?” Sir Stephen asked.

            “Why?  I won’t be using them anymore,” said Nat.  “That’s one of the things we talk about at the faculty in Dundee… we’ve all got different plans for how we’re going to lie to the future with our corpses.”

            “What about written histories?  Can you not use those?” Sir Stephen asked, grunting as he turned the slab over again.

            “They often don’t tell us what we want to know,” Nat said.  “Anyway, histories are written by people who have their own point of view, and they’ll leave things out or even invent things in order to support their argument.”  Zola had said that truth was something people made up, but for archaeologists, truth was something to _dig_ up out of the muck of lies and omissions and misconceptions it got buried in.  Just like digging old bones out of the dirt.  “Historians lie to you.  Bones don’t.”

            “You just told me yours _would_ ,” Sir Stephen protested.

            They reached the fence.  The gate was obviously the weakest point – Sir Stephen stood his piece of concrete on end, turned it edge-on to the gate to focus the force on the smallest possible area, and gave it a shove.  It crashed through, ripping the gate right off its hinges, and then to everybody’s horror it _kept going_ , turning a couple more times before falling on its side like a rolled coin, just inches short of colliding with the nearest of the standing slabs.

            Everybody breathed a sigh of relief, and Sir Stephen went to pick the slab up again, while Natasha realized she could hear something.  Her phone was ringing in her jacket pocket.  She pulled it out and put it to one ear, covering the other with her hand in an attempt to block out the sound of the wind.

            “Hello?” she said.

            She did not immediately hear the reply, because her companions seemed to decide this would be the ideal moment to hold a conversation.

            “We’ve got a problem!” Sam said.  The biting wind meant everybody still had to shout to be heard.  “Sir Steve’s the only one who can move the slab, but he’s _also_ the only one who can hold up the fallen stone!  How are we gonna do this?”

            “Maybe the rest of us can hold up the stone while he puts the slab under it?” Jones suggested.  “There’s not ten of us, but we can try.”

            “The people who built this would have had to move the stones somehow…” Sharon mused.

            “Everybody shut up, I’m on the phone!” Nat told them.  She tried again.  “Hello!  I can’t hear you!”

            “Dr. Jones!”  It was the voice of the Sea Dog – Nat had given him her number to ring if he thought the weather were about to change, or if something else untoward happened.  “My radar’s got three airborne targets coming in from the south!  They could be for the refinery, but they’re off course if they are, and you asked me to let you know about things like that!”

            “Okay, thanks!” Nat said.  “Give me a figure minutes and I’ll let you know if we’re coming back!”  She put the phone back in her pocket, and went to the edge of the low cliff to see if his radar objects were visible to the naked eye.  With her hands around her face to protect her eyes from the wind, by squinting at the horizon she could just barely make out three little lights in the misty drizzle.

            “What do you see?” asked Sir Stephen, as the others joined her.

            “We’ve got incoming,” Nat replied.  “Could be nothing, but we’d better lie low, just in case.”

            Everybody looked at the crushed gate and the slab of concrete, and realized there was no way to fix it before their visitors arrived.  They didn’t want to go back to the boat before they knew for sure who was coming, for fear of losing valuable time, so instead they returned to the ruined building to crouch among the moldering walls.  From that vantage point they would be able to see if the aircraft turned away or passed over… but they didn’t.  As they drew closer they also descended lower and lower, until the thud of helicopter rotors drowned out even the wind and surf, and it began to look worrying as if they intended to land not far away.

            Next to Nat by the wall, Jones was sitting hugging his legs to his chest, breathing hard.  His eyes were huge, and while Nat couldn’t _hear_ his breathing, the shuddering gasps _looked_ as if he were about to have an asthma attack.  Was that possible?  She’d never _said_ anywhere that her father suffered from such an ailment, but she’d also never said he _didn’t_.

            “Are you okay?” she asked him.

            “I don’t know,” he whimpered, and she realized he wasn’t sick – he was simply terrified.

            The first helicopter came in to land on a level area just beyond the ruined building and, unfortunately, between it and the wharf where the Sea Dog was waiting.  The rotor spun to a stop, the door opened, and Zola came out.  Because he was so small he could not step out, but had to slide down from a sitting position like a child getting off a sofa.  He was in his black suit and tie, apparently not at all bothered by the weather even though the wind was stirring his mutton chops.

            Behind him were two more men.  The first, Nat was startled to see, was the missing Mr. Pierce.  He was wearing a suit and tie, and a long beige coat that was not at all appropriate for the bitter weather.  He turned up his collar and folded his arms across his chest, shivering.  Then, as the other two helicopters set down beyond, Pierce and Zola moved aside to let a third man disembark.

            Natasha, peeking over the broken walls to watch, almost stopped breathing.  Here she was, for the second time in a week, seeing a statue brought to life.

            Johann Totenkopf, the Red Death, was a little over six feet tall and appeared to be in his early fifties, with pale skin and a receding hairline.  His face was fierce, his nose long and hawklike and his eyebrows sharply tilted, his forehead and mouth deeply lined from long years of frowning.  He was much more sensibly dressed than Pierce or Zola, in a dark green down jacket and a fur hat, and he pushed past his shivering minions to take a look at the landscape.  Nat crouched a little lower.  Her instincts said that this was a man used to picking out hidden opponents at a distance, and that she needed to do a better job of hiding – but her training was equally insistent that she must not take her eyes off him.

            A man in a black uniform, a rifle in his hands, came up and said something to the Red Death.  Nat couldn’t hear his voice over the sound of the wind and the helicopter engines, but she had a good idea what news he was delivery.  The broken gate and the slab of concrete would make it perfectly obvious that somebody else was here – and there weren’t many places that somebody could hide.

            Nat wasn’t the only one who’d seen him.  Sir Stephen was beside her, and she saw his hand go to the sword at his belt.  “The Red Death,” he growled, and began to stand up.  She had a horrifying mental image of Sir Stephen leaping the wall to attack the man then and there, and she quickly tackled him to prevent it.  Sam and Sharon made the same observation, and had the same reaction.

            It was unlikely that even the three of them together could have overpowered Sir Stephen, so the fact that he stayed down meant he must have understood that they’d stopped him for a _reason_.  Even so, Nat sat squarely on his back as she bent down to hiss in his ear.  “What the hell was that?” she demanded.  “You’d be dead before you got over the wall!”

            “His sorcery cannot harm me, and none of his followers has so much as a dagger!” Sir Stephen protested.

            “They’ve got _guns_ , you idiot!” said Nat, and then realized that might not mean anything to him.  Sir Stephen had been shot before, but at the time he must have been disoriented from suddenly popping into existence, and the warehouse might have already been on fire.  Maybe he hadn’t realized where the shots had _come_ from, only that they hurt.  Natasha had handed out guns to her companions, but nobody had thought to demonstrate them for Sir Stephen’s benefit.  He might have no idea what they did.

            The helicopters had shut down their engines by now, and the voices were drawing closer.  Everybody scrambled back into the corners of the walls, out of sight.

            “It would have taken a machine to move that stone,” somebody was saying.

            “It’s Rogsey,” another voice replied.  “It can be no other.”

            This second speaker had to be the Red Death.  Like Sir Stephen, he spoke modern English with a little old-fashioned grammar thrown in for flavour.  He also had a strong German accent, almost to the point of parody.  That wasn’t the voice of a real person, Nat thought.  That was a figure from legend, who talked the way a twenty-first century reader of the medieval poems might _imagine_ him talking.

            “Rogsey?”  That was Pierce.  “How would he get out here?”  They were directly on the other side of the wall, staying close to it for shelter from the wind.

            “He might well have swam!” snarled the Red Death.  “I care not!  Find him for me!”

            Natasha glanced at her companions.  They all knew they were in trouble.  Without a word, she unzipped her bag and began handing out weapons.  A rifle for herself, one for Sam, one for Sharon – and under the circumstances, one for Allen Jones didn’t seem like a terrible idea after all.  When she offered him the weapon, however, he balked.

            “I can’t use one of those!” he protested, holding up his hands.

            “You said you should shoot,” Nat reminded him.  “Duck hunting!”

            “Yeah, but that’s a…” he pointed at the rifle in her hands.  “That’s not for hunting!  I’ve never used one of _those_!”

            “It’s not hard, just point and click,” said Nat.  She put it in his hands, then loaded and checked her own before assuming a crouched position with her back to the wall.

            They waited in the closest thing to silence that Flotta’s ferocious winds would allow, eyes darting back and forth from frightened face to frightened face.  Everybody knew that taking the first shot would give away their position, but the Red Death’s men must already know that they were hiding somewhere in the ruins, and gunfire would keep them away a while at least.  The Red Death’s superior numbers meant that they would soon be surrounded.  Why, Nat wondered, hadn’t they decided that safe was better than sorry, and gone back to the boat?  They would surely have had time to make it.

            The sound of footsteps told Nat that at least three men were approaching the nearest doorway.  This was it.  Now or never.  The first person they would see when they came in was Sharon.  Natasha met her eyes, and Sharon nodded and stood up.

            She was holding the rifle still, but instead of using it, she went to the doorway and showed the men her badge.

            “Stop right there,” she ordered.  “I’m Officer Carter of the Orkney County Police.”  Her badge would say _Inverness Shire_ , but hopefully they wouldn’t look that close.  “We’re here on behalf of Historic Scotland to arrest you for unauthorized access to a scheduled historic monument.”

            The three men outside hadn’t been expecting _that_ , and stopped short, glancing at each other just as Nat and her companions had done a moment earlier, trying to figure out what to do next.  There were four of them, in black uniforms with a white logo on the shoulder – a skull and tentacles.  Natasha had seen that during her training, but only in pictures, and it belonged to an organization that was supposed to be long-extinct.  What were these guys doing wearing the logo of HYDRA, a Nazi sect interested in the supernatural?  Who were they? 

            After a moment of indecision, one of the four made up his mind and shot Sharon directly in the chest.  She staggered backwards and fell over.

            The others reacted immediately.  Nat stood up and took aim at the shooter’s forehead – he went down with a single bullet.  Sir Stephen, meanwhile, leaped to his feet, and while the remaining three men stared in shock at this nightmare figure in his medieval chain mail and Adidas sneakers, he charged and ran one of them through.  Nat vaulted through a hole in the wall to take on the others, and Sam ran to Sharon’s side and tore her coat open.

            Nat heard a groan of relief.  She glanced back, and saw that under Sharon’s coat she’d been wearing a bullet-proof vest.  Thank goodness.  She might have a broken rib or two, but probably no fatal damage.

            Although she’d killed the first man, Nat took care to be less deadly with the next few, aiming instead for their legs.  If they made it out of this, she wanted to be able to question at least one of them, and she couldn’t do that if they were dead.  Her first impulse was to provide cover for Sir Stephen, who had only short-range weapons himself, but he was holding his own.  Bullets bounced right off his magic shield, and the men he’d attacked were already running in a panic from the madman with the sword.  Sam had by now picked up the gun Natasha had given _him_ and joined in the fight, but in all the chaos Pierce, Zola, and the Red Death had somehow disappeared.  Had they gotten back in the helicopters?

            No, Nat realized, they were heading up the slope towards the stone circle, with perhaps a dozen men in HYDRA uniforms accompanying them.

            Whatever the hell _they_ were about to do, that must be what Natasha had to stop.  She ducked back behind a wall to re-load.  Would the Red Death have the same magical ability to recover from gunshots as Sir Stephen did?  They’d stopped listening to the romance before it had gotten into _his_ backstory.  She would have to find out for herself.

            As she finished loading her weapon, two men came running through the doorway opening where Sharon had confronted the first group of four.  Nat would have to deal with them first.  One approached her, raising his own rifle at point blank range.  Nat calmly hit him in the crotch with the butt end of her own, and he collapsed – right on top of her.  It took her a moment to shove him off, and when she did she found that the other, together with a third, was dragging Allen Jones to his feet.  Jones was making no effort whatsoever to defend himself.  All he’d done was raise his hands, his gun lying forgotten at his feet.

            Nat kicked one of the men in the small of the back.  He fell down, but before she could attack the second, somebody grabbed her around the legs.  It was the man she’d hit in the crotch, who was apparently a tougher customer than most in his position.  He pulled Nat off her feet and pushed her face into the stony soil.  Somebody else, possibly the other man who’d been threatening Jones, hit her in the back of the head.  She saw stars.

            A couple of people pulled her roughly to her feet.  Although spots were still dancing in front of her eyes, Natasha could see Jones just standing there watching in helpless horror, his hands held up as if to do something but frozen in mid-motion.  Nat glared at him.  If he really thought he was her father, shouldn’t he be _doing_ something, or at least shouting at the men to leave her alone?  Yet he remained mute.  The men dragged Natasha out of the ruins and put handcuffs on her, and Jones didn’t even make a token protest as they did the same to him.

            Sam had done his best to defend himself, but he’d also been trying to keep an eye on Sharon, who’d been winded by the shot she’d taken.  Her vest had kept her from a penetrating injury but she was still not well, and she and Sam had both been captured.  That just left Sir Stephen, who was still on his feet.  His reflexes, as he moved his shield to block bullets, were definitely superhuman, and the soldiers who shot at him did so while backing away, knowing he might charge them at any moment.  He’d already wounded or killed half a dozen, with not a mark on him.

            A bullet whizzed by his ear and he turned to attack the shooter, but this time it was a trap – another man pulled out a taser and shot Sir Stephen in the face with it.  One of the electrodes hit the nose guard of his helmet, the other the curtain of chainmail that hung down behind it.  As both were made of conducting iron, that was enough, and electricity surged through his head and neck.  Poor Sir Stephen couldn’t even brace for it.  Like the guns, he had no idea what this device did.  He hit the ground face-first and twitching.

            Four people were required to get the handcuffs on him.  His sword and daggers were tossed into Natasha’s bag with the rifles, and the man in the lead carried his shield like a trophy as all five prisoners were marched up the hill to where the Red Death was waiting.

            While the firefight was going on in the ruins, the rest of the Red Death’s men had been busy at the top of the slope.  They’d propped up the fallen stone with some flat-pack scaffolding, but rather than digging underneath it, they were pouring gravel and concrete into the hole that had allowed it to topple, and piling earth up behind it so it couldn’t fall that way, either.  More helicopters were bringing in concrete slabs to replace the missing stones, and surveyor was checking to be sure everything matched the conjectured layout from Lau’s map.  The Red Death was watching, while Pierce shouted orders and made grandiose gestures, trying to look important.

            Another prisoner was there ahead of them, handcuffed to the remains of the chain-link fence – the Red Death’s men had captured the Sea Dog.  Nat gave him an apologetic look.  He hadn’t asked to be a part of this fiasco.  All he’d done was give some weird southerners a boat ride.

            “Mr. Totenkopf!” the man carrying the shield called out.

            The Red Death turned around, and smiled when he saw the rest of the captives.  He looked much more at ease in his modern clothing that Sir Stephen ever had, Nat noted, and heled himself like a man who was used to being listened to – and one who could dispense terrible consequences to the disobedient.  He glanced over the others, but the one he approached was Sir Stephen, who’d been forced to his knees on the ground with cuffs around his ankles as well as his wrists, and four people holding him down.  Four more came to join in.  They were taking no chances with this super-warrior.

            The Red Death took Sir Stephen’s helmet off him to get a look at his face, then reached out and ran a leather-gloved finger down the bald patch in his hair.  This was the only remaining evidence now of where, only a few days earlier, he’d had his face split open with a medieval axe.

            Sir Stephen glared at him, then spat at the Red Death’s feet.  The other man glanced down and scraped the little blob of saliva aside with his shoe.  Then he stepped back and straightened up, and when he spoke he was addressing not Sir Stephen, but the rest of his prisoners.

            “I am forever astonished by this man’s ability to attract followers, regardless of the circumstances he finds them in!” the Red Death said.  “He has a true gift, one I must confess my envy of!”

            He was going to try to _reason_ with them, Nat thought.  He was going to try to convince them that he, not Sir Stephen, was in the right.  Real people didn’t do that – that sort of behaviour was reserved for the villains of James Bond movies.  She wouldn’t try to stop him, though.  While he talked, she could think about how to escape.

            “I don’t know what he has said to you,” the Red Death went on, “but I do know that Sir Stephen of Rogsey is a noble man, a true warrior, and loyal to the last.  I also know that the world we have both awakened on is a troubled one.”  He stood up a little straighter.  “I’ve been ‘watching the news’, as you say, since Mr. Pierce was kind enough to call upon me.  I’ve seen the terrible wars, the hunger, the poverty, the nations ruled by the whims of an indecisive rabble.  The very earth itself is falling to pieces all around you, burdened by the weight of too many millions.  If your people continue as you are, it will be to your own destruction.  Is it not time to end this madness?”

            That was a familiar tune to Natasha.  It had been the philosophy of many a dictator throughout history – the only way to _save_ people was to subjugate them.  It had been what the Romans were thinking when they destroyed the druids, Alexander the Great’s reason for conquering Persia… and it certainly did explain the logo on the Red Death’s followers’ sleeves.

            “Histories remember the Holy Grail as a mere cup,” the Red Death said, “but it is infinitely more.  It is not _san-gréal_ but _sang real_ , the blood of the Old Gods.  It is the very force of creation, and he who possesses it can re-make the world as he sees fit.”

            Sir Stephen apparently couldn’t tolerate that kind of talk.  “Only God can create!” he said.

            “Then His is a poor creation!” the Red Death countered.  “What loving father would make a world of such pain and disorder, in which his children torment and murder and starve one another?  With the Grail, I shall make a better one.”

            “You cannot make men better by taking away their free will,” Sir Stephen said.  “You only make them slaves.”

            “Is it not better to be a happy slave than a wretched freeman?” the Red Death asked.

            “No man can be happy, who knows he is a slave,” said Sir Stephen.

            “That is why we _do not tell them_.”  The Red Death shook his head and spoke to the rest of the group again.  “Why do you follow this man?” he asked.  “You can have no quarrel with Wilhelm of Normandy, for he is long dead.  You’d likely never heard of _me_ until he told you his tale.  What has Sir Stephen offered you to secure your loyalty?”

            That was a difficult question to answer.  Sir Stephen hadn’t _offered_ them anything.  They’d been drawn one by one into this bizarre situation that seemed like somebody needed to do something about it, and now they were too deeply involved to back out.  The only person who spoke up was the Sea Dog.

            “I just do what I’m paid to, mate,” he said, possibly in the hope that the Red Death would let him go.

            The Red Death’s eyebrows rose.  “Really?  _Money_?  Is that all?”

            “There’s also the fact that _he_ doesn’t go around calling himself _the Red Death_ ,” said Sam.  “I dunno about anybody else, but that says ‘supervillain’ to me.”

            “And Sir Steve doesn’t hang out with Nazis,” Nat added.

            This statement surprised her own companions as well as startling the Red Death, who cocked his head as if unsure what the word meant.  “Nazis?” he asked.

            “We’re not Nazis!” Pierce protested indignantly.

            “Yes, you are!” Nat informed him.  “Your men have a HYDRA logo on their uniforms!  HYDRA,” she explained, for the benefit of her companions, “was an organization created by the Third Reich, kind of like a Nazi x-files.  They thought they could give Hitler supreme power by finding things from folklore, like the Ark of the Covenant or a tunnel to the centre of the earth.  I should have figured it out earlier, what with Pierce going on about how awesome the Vikings were, and the whole Holy Grail thing!”  In hindsight, it was blindingly obvious.

            “The Nazis did not create HYDRA!” Pierce huffed.  “HYDRA created the Nazis!”

            That was chickens and eggs as far as Nat was concerned.  “We’ll stick with the guy who doesn’t think he can solve the world’s problems by gassing people to death,” she told Pierce.

            “Are you claiming moral superiority as an _American_?” Pierce sneered in reply.  “You’re the only country ever to actually drop a nuke!”

            The Red Death cleared his throat, and Pierce fell silent.  “We will not heal the world by poisonous vapours or by ‘nuclear bombs’,” the Red Death said.  “Its evils must be cleansed so that they never existed in the first place.  No use in arguing the point further,” he added, to Pierce.  “Their minds are clearly set.”

            “Maybe they’ll change when they see the Grail,” Pierce suggested.

            “If not, we shall change their minds _for_ them,” the Red Death said.  “Let us proceed.  I think Sir Stephen deserves to _see_ what he has sought for so long.”


	11. Aphelion

            The HYDRA goons left Natasha and the others handcuffed to the remains of the fence so they could finish their work.  As soon as she was sure they weren’t looking, Nat got to work on escaping – she’d never quite kicked the habit of keeping a piece of wire in the cuff of her jacket for just such an emergency, and it was child’s play to wheedle it out with her fingers and start picking the handcuff lock.  Next she would have to retrieve their guns, which had been tossed in a pile further along the fence, along with objects like Nat’s purse, Sir Stephen’s shield, and Sharon’s badge and service weapon.  Then she would have to fight her way through the soldiers to get the others out.

That would be challenging.  She hadn’t done anything like it in a very long time and was accordingly out of practice.  She rehearsed the fight moves she’d need in her head, hoping she was still up to them.

            “What time is it?” the Red Death demanded of Pierce.

            Pierce checked his watch.  “We’ve got… maybe ten minutes!” he said, worried.

            The Red Death looked up at the drizzly sky.  “That’s not going to change in time,” he said.

            Nat finished getting out of her handcuffs, and looked at Sharon on her right.  Sharon nodded and moved her own hands, to show that _she_ was also halfway free.  Nat smiled – a bullet-proof vest _and_ a lockpick.  She liked people who came prepared.  Sharon inched to the right to start helping Sam escape, while Nat moved left to let out the Sea Dog.

            “Not a sound,” she warned in his ear.

            “No, Ma’am,” he muttered back.

            The men had the centre stone upright and stable now – somebody held a plumb bomb against it to make sure it was perfectly vertical, and then looked at the Red Death and nodded.  Other people were performing similar checks on the other stones, making sure everything was right.  A man was checking items off on a list.

            The Red Death approached the central stone and rapped on it with his knuckles.  Then he took an envelope out of his pocket and removed a small object from it, which he inserted into a pit in the stone.

            “You’re _sure_ today is aphelion?” he asked Pierce.

            “Absolutely!  At 7:10 PM!” Pierce assured him.  “They’ve got machines that can calculate it to the second!”

            The Red Death looked at the sky again.  “I’ll have to clear it,” he said.

            “Use one of them,” Pierce suggested, pointing at the prisoners.

            Nat froze and flattened herself against the fence again, pretending to still be in cuffs.  Sharon and Sam had the good sense to do the same.  The Sea Dog, however, panicked.  He looked around at all the black-clad goons, and then tried to run.

            “Don’t!” Nat shouted, as he dashed for the hole in the fence, but it was too late.  A half-dozen of the HYDRA men piled on top of him, and dragged him, struggling, back towards the Red Death.  Nat glanced at the pile of their weapons, but it was too far away, and people were paying attention to the prisoners again now.  She couldn’t help him.  There were too many for her to take on unarmed and alone.

            “It seems we have a volunteer,” said Pierce.

            “Indeed.”  The Red Death took out a dagger.  It wasn’t an eleventh-century type, but it was definitely medieval, and look less like a knife than like a railroad spike with a handle, half an inch thick and square in cross-section.  Nat had seen things like that – they were called _ballock daggers_ , and were specifically designed for piercing plate armor.  It would go into a human skull like a needle in a pincushion.

            “You have no quarrel with this man!” Sir Stephen called out.  “If you must kill, take me!  It is I who am your enemy!”

            Was that a selfless offer, Nat wondered, or a calculated one?  Sir Stephen knew he could heal.

            The Red Death paused, licking his lips as he looked Sir Stephen over, and for a moment it seemed like he might change his mind.  Then, however, he suddenly turned and plunged the dagger into the Sea Dog’s neck.  When Sir Stephen had described the druids making people explode, Nat hadn’t thought of it as literal, but that was exactly what happened now.  The Sea Dog burst like a water balloon, in a giant splash of blood that soaked the Red Death’s clothing and splattered on the ground all around him.

            Natasha had seen some terrible things in her life, but never anything like that.  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sharon raising one hand to cover her mouth in horror.

            At once, the wind dropped.  The clouds parted and the sun, low on the horizon, shone through.  For a moment there was a brilliant rainbow as the mist lingered, but then it was gone.

            “Reveal the Grail!” the Red Death ordered.

            Sunlight sliced through the crack in the stone at the west end of the circle, to fall on the large slab now standing up straight in the middle.  The line was bare millimetres away from the object the Red Death had inserted.  Given a few moments for the Earth to rotate, it would fall directly on it and… what would happen then?  Would a secret chamber open?  Would it project a hologram showing where to find the Grail?  Would it transform into the Holy Grail itself?  Natasha had no idea, and the fact that she was even considering any of those options was frankly ridiculous.  Things like that happened in movies and comic books, not in real life  Real archaeology was, as she’d already observed, mostly dirt and paperwork!  How could anything supernatural possibly happen when the sunlight hit that stone?

            Because if the people here _believed_ it would, then it would, she reminded herself.  That was apparently how the world worked now.

            Painfully slowly, over what was probably only a couple of minutes but seemed like hours, the shadows moved across the face of the stone.  The tip of it got lower and lower as it did, and Natasha began to nurse a forlorn hope that it would miss the object the Red Death had plugged in.  Maybe they’d gotten the stone at the wrong angle or something.  Or maybe if Natasha just hoped hard enough.

            The slice of light arrived in the centre of the stone.  There was a burst of light, and the ground began to shake.  The soil in front of the stone, where the anthill was, began to drop into a pit underneath.  The black-garbed HYDRA soldiers moved backwards, but the Red Death and Zola eagerly approached the opening chasm.  It grew bigger and bigger, until it was big enough to hold a refrigerator, then stopped.  The Red Death looked into it, and Nat saw his expression change from anticipation to surprise to disappointment… and then to rage.

            “What time is it?” he demanded of Pierce.

            “7:12 PM, local time,” said Pierce.  He looked into the pit himself, and was horrified.  “It should be there!  I did the research, this is the right place!  Where else could it be?”

            The Red Death pursed his lips, looking around at his followers.  Then his eyes narrowed, he balled his fists, and he stalked up to Sir Stephen.  While the others were locked up with ordinary handcuffs, Sir Stephen’s arms and legs had thick chains and proper medieval shackles to hold him to the fence.  If he hadn’t been so thoroughly restrained, Nat doubted the Red Death would have made it across the circle alive – Sir Stephen was pulling at the chains to try to get at him, bending the links and twisting the wire in the fence.

            “What did you do?” he demanded.

            “I did nothing,” said Sir Stephen.

            The Red Death looked around at the others.  “What did you do?” he demanded.  “Where have you taken it?  How did you retrieve it without the map?”

            Nobody answered.  Nobody knew why the Grail hadn’t been there.  Had the HYDRA men put the stone back incorrectly?  Had Dr. Lau found it and taken it away twenty years ago?  How the hell were they supposed to know?

            The Red Death seized Sir Stephen by the chainmail shirt and shook him, rattling the cuffs and fence.  “What did you do?  Where is it?” he roared.

            “Perhaps your pagan gods have abandoned you!” Sir Stephen replied.

            The Red Death punched him in the gut.  Sir Stephen yanked with all his might on his wrists, and broke the wire of the fence with a painful-sounding _spang!_ , freeing his hands.  He grabbed the Red Death by the neck and the two of them fell into the mud, still attached to the fence by the cuffs on Sir Stephen’s ankles, grappling less like medieval warriors and more like children on a playground.

            The HYDRA men were no longer looking at the other prisoners – they were running to peel Sir Stephen off their leader.  That gave Nat an opening.  She ran for their weapons and snatched up a gun, then picked up Sir Stephen’s shield.  He was back on his feet now, with six men holding him down as the Red Death backed off with a bloody nose.

            “Sir Steve!” Nat shouted, and threw the shield to him as if it were a frisbee.  He caught it, and somehow used the edge to sever the chains on his feet.  Now free, he held up the shield against a hail of gunfire, and ran at the Red Death again without even waiting for Nat to bring him his sword.

            Sharon had Sam free now, and both ran to grab weapons while the soldiers were busy with Sir Stephen.  Nat loaded her gun and stood up to start shooting again.  Earlier she hadn’t wanted to kill anybody if she could help it.  Now that she knew, from Pierce’s own mouth, and these guys were Nazis, she didn’t have nearly so many qualms about it.  They needed one to live so they could question him, but they didn’t need him to live very _long_.

            There was somebody missing from their party, she realized.  There was herself, Sir Stephen, Sharon, and Sam… the Sea Dog was dead, and that just left…

            Jones.  He was still cuffed to the fence halfway around the circle, struggling and calling for help as his surroundings descended into chaos.  Pierce was striding purposefully towards him, with several men following.

            Nat’s blood ran cold.  Jones might have just sat there and watched _her_ be attacked, but that didn’t mean she would do the same, whether he was her father or not.  She shot each of Pierce’s two companions in the thigh.  Pierce himself spun around to see what was going on as they fell, and Nat vaulted onto his shoulders and knocked him to the ground, her legs locked around his neck to cut off his air.  While he struggled, another man ran up to help.  Nat let go of Pierce and jumped up to ram the top of her head into his chin, hard.  He staggered backwards, mouth bleeding – he’d bit the end of his tongue off.  Another man ran up, and Nat put a bullet in his femoral artery, then swept out a leg to knock down Pierce, who’d been trying to get up again, before somersaulting back to her feet in a single fluid motion.

            Pierce crawled away on his elbows, like a wounded man in a trench.  The remaining soldiers surrounded him to protect him, and Sam and Sharon ran in to give Nat cover as she undid Jones’ handcuffs.

            “Did… did they teach you that in ballet?” he managed, his eyes bulging.

            “Shut up,” Nat told him.  She turned away and scooped up her gun again, but either the HYDRA guys had given up, or somebody had called for a tactical retreat.  Pierce was on his feet, and men were helping him through the broken fence while, just beyond it, helicopter blades were starting to thrum.

            Two helicopters rose into view above the top of the fence.  Both had their doors shut, and Nat couldn’t see who was on board.  She also couldn’t see Sir Stephen – where was _he_?

            Sam took a shot at one of the helicopters.  Nat didn’t see what he hit, but it must have worked, because the tail rotor shut down and as a result the vehicle began to spin out of control.  It veered off to the south and vanished over the edge of the shallow cliff, and a moment later the darkening sky lit up again as its fuel caught fire in the crash.  The second helicopter was already gaining altitude, and although Sam shot at it twice, he missed both times.

            “Damn it,” he said.  
            “Where is Sir Steve?” Nat asked him.

            “I don’t know,” said Sam.  “He was following…”

            The sound of another rotor made them all look up again as the third helicopter rose into view over the fence.  This one had the door open, and the Red Death was leaning out to watch Zola, who must have been stronger than he looked, dragging Pierce on board.  Hanging on to the landing skids underneath was Sir Stephen.

            Nat looked at Sam, but he was looking at her, unsure what to do.  Could Sir Stephen recover from being in a helicopter crash?  Neither of them knew, and neither was willing to go to the risk of finding out.

            The Red Death reached back and grabbed a gun from somebody else in the helicopter, then leaned down to stick it in Sir Stephen’s face and pull the trigger.

            Sir Stephen reached up and pushed the barrel aside, so the shot missed his head.  Instead it went through his other arm, and he lost his hold, dropping fifty feet to land in a heap at the foot of one of the standing stones.  Sam ran to check on him.

            Nat, meanwhile, lined up another shot, aiming for right between the Red Death’s eyes.  Through the scope she made eye contact with him, then saw him put a hand on Pierce’s chest and push.  Pierce toppled out of the helicopter, and while Sir Stephen had been lucky enough to miss the stones, Pierce was not.  He fell right on the triangular upper edge of the central one, and the sharp angle of the corner went right through him.

            When she looked up at the helicopter again, Nat found that Zola and the Red Death were gone.  Had they teleported away, or were they just invisible?  Somebody shut the door, and the machine thumped away over the ocean.

            Sharon and Jones were both visibly relieved that the soldiers were gone – Natasha was, too, but she was also confused.  Why had the Red Death left his enemies alive?  He must be smart enough to know that if he just abandoned him on the island, they would escape and come after him again.  Could he really be _running away_ from the mere five of them?

            Then the ground began to shake.

            That got everybody’s attention.  Four of the five party members had been present for the hospital collapse, and Nat felt a little sick as she wondered if this were something similar.  Was the Red Death’s magic powerful enough to tear the island apart underneath them?  That would be a disaster on multiple levels, because at the other end of Flotta was the oil refinery.  If _that_ fell into the sea, it would spread crude for miles.

            The stone Pierce had landed on cracked vertically into multiple pieces, then horizontally into more.  A second stone began to break up as well, then a third – and the pieces tumbled across the ground towards the centre, where they began arranging themselves into a humanoid figure.  Before Nat’s eyes, the entire circle fell apart and began to rearrange itself, both the natural stone and HYDRA’s concrete replicas, into a colossal humanoid figure.

            In a moment of disbelieving panic, Natasha shot at it.  The bullets pinked off the stone and the figure kept coming.

            “I thought you said magic can’t create life!” Sam shouted, helping Sir Stephen to stand.

            “This does not live!”  Sir Stephen stepped away from him, wobbly on his feet and moving as if in some pain, but able to support his own weight.  He raised his shield on his right arm, but could not hold his sword in his wounded left.  “It is like your machines, doing only as its master bids!”

            The rest of the circle stones were crumbling, and the figure began to move.  It ripped its legs out of the deep pits the stones had been propped up in, and then took a single giant step.  The ground shook again with the impact.

            The Red Death had left them behind, Natasha realized, because he figured this colossus or whatever it was would kill them all easily.  He was probably right.

            One of the HYDRA guys had been left behind, still lying where he’d fallen when Natasha shot him in the leg.  He was yelling and waving, trying to get up so he could call for the helicopters to come back.  The colossus had no eyes or ears, so how he came to its notice was impossible to say, but he did.  He tried to crawl away as it reached for him, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough.  The colossus picked him up by the injured leg, causing him to howl in pain, and then slammed him into the ground again.

            Sir Stephen could walk away from a blow like that, but no random skinhead could.  The man bounced once, then lay still.

            “Run!” Nat decided.  “Get back to the boat!”

            “What about the refinery?” asked Sharon.  Her first thought, too, must have been for the ecosystem.

            “They’re on their own!” Nat said.  She threw her gun aside and grabbed her purse – it still had those two iron pedants in it that she thought might be important – then rolled out of the way as the colossus tried to step on her.  The rest of the party were already on their way through the hole in the fence, but Jones paused to look back.

            “Natalie!” he urged.  “Hurry!”

            “I’m _coming_!” she insisted, but then the colossus’ enormous leg came down between her and the fence.  It took a swing at her with an over-long, gibbon-like arm, and she ducked under it, then grabbed the chain link and pulled herself up over the top of the fence before dropping to the other side.  She hit the ground running.

            “Go!” she ordered the others.  “ _Go_!”

            Flotta was not a large island.  It was only about half a kilometre from the stone circle on the headland to the old dock where the Sea Dog’s boat was, but that was a very long way when there were giant animate slabs of stone chasing after them.  Most of the group was in good shape for running, but Allen Jones was both the oldest and a bit overweight.  He quickly fell behind, and Sir Stephen slowed down and darted in between Jones and the colossus, raising his shield to protect them both.  Nat knew she should keep running, but she couldn’t help stopping to watch.  Surely, both of them were going to be crushed to a pulp.

            The colossus brought down a handless arm, and to Nat’s amazement, rather than killing both men the stone actually _cracked_ where it hit the shield.  For a moment she honestly couldn’t believe her eyes – what was that shield _made_ of, because it had to be something far more solid than mere leather and wood, as normal Saxon shields had been!  A moment later she came to her senses and realized it didn’t matter.  The only thing she needed to take from what she’d just seen was that Sir Stephen could hold his own, and the rest of them had to get to the boat.

            When she reached the ruined building, Nat made a right turn to head down to the dock, and nearly ran right into Sam, who’d come to a sudden halt right in front of her.  Sharon stopped, too, and all three of them took in the horrible sight.

            The Sea Dog’s boat had been set adrift.  It was now several hundred metres out and bobbing aimlessly on the water.  The winds that had been cleared up by the Red Death’s magic were now rising again, carrying it further from shore and making the sea rough enough that swimming was not a viable option.

            That left only one other place to go.

            “Refinery?” asked Sam.

            “Refinery!” Nat agreed.  Whether that would actually be safe, she really didn’t know.  The only idea she could come up with was that it was possible, for whatever reason, that the people there might have some dynamite.  Explosives seemed like the only thing that might be able to destroy a magically-animated rock.

            They scurried back up the slope.  Sir Stephen, carrying Jones on his back again, saw them coming.  “What is it?” he asked.

            “Boat’s gone!  We’re going to the refinery!” said Nat.  It seemed like a stupider idea the more times she said it, but what else was there?

            “You cannot mean to lead the colossus to more men and women!” Sir Stephen protested.

            “Do you have a better idea?” Sam demanded.

            It was at least another kilometre to the refinery, and the colossus had long legs.  Natasha could and had run marathons, but not at the speed needed to keep ahead of this thing.  The others were tiring, too, but the colossus wasn’t made of muscle and bone and had no such limitations.  There was no way they’d keep ahead much longer.

            Then, in the gathering dark, a trail of wind-borne dust appeared leaving the refinery and approaching them.  The source proved to be a jeep, with two people in it – probably employees, coming out to investigate what all the gunfire and helicopters had been about.  As it drew nearer, the man sitting in the passenger’s seat opened his door and leaned out, staring at the stone giant striding across the landscape in obvious incomprehension.

            “Hey!”  Sam started waving his arms.  “Hey!  Help us!”

            The jeep pulled to a stop about a dozen metres ahead of them.  It had a Roxxon logo painted on the side, and both the driver and her passenger were wearing navy blue jumpsuits with the same logo embroidered on the pocket.  Nat ran and climbed in the back, not even bothering to greet their rescuers.  Sam and Sharon were right behind her, and neither even bothered to open the vehicle doors – they just climbed up and clung to the outside of it.

            Sir Stephen and Allen Jones had fallen further behind than Nat had thought, and the colossus was already on top of them.  Jones was on the ground now, hiding behind Sir Stephen, who was using his shield to deflect the bones the colossus rained down upon them.  The shield’s magic was keeping him from being crushed, but his feet were starting to sink into the ground, as if he were being driven into the landscape like a nail into a board.  Sir Stephen might have the strength of ten, but there was no way he’d be able to keep that up forever.

            “Go get them!” Nat ordered the driver.

            “Are you _daft_ , woman?” the passenger asked.  “They’re toast!”

            “Go get them!” Nat repeated, shaking the driver’s shoulder.

            “I’m getting them!  I’m getting them!”  The driver put the jeep in gear, and roared up the gentle slope.  The colossus, moving to get a better angle on its victims, stepped into their way with a leg almost as thick around as the jeep itself, and when the driver didn’t react fast enough, Nat reached over her shoulder to grab the wheel and swerve out of the way.  The passenger hollered and hid his face in his hands.

            “Guys!” Nat shouted as they approached.

            “Sir Steve!” Sharon joined in – Sam did as well.  “Mr. Jones!  Sir Steve!”

            Jones reached out to them.  Nat opened the back door and grabbed his arm as they went by, pulling him into the back of the vehicle with her.  Sir Stephen continued to fight the colossus, but he did look back to see if Jones were okay.  In that moment, while his head was turned, the colossus swung one arm and knocked him off his feet.  He was sent tumbling across the ground, right into the path of the jeep.  The driver screamed and tried to turn, but there was a double thump as she ran over him.

            “Oh, my god!” the woman exclaimed.  “Oh, my god, I hit him!  I hit him!  I’m so sorry!”  She hit the brakes, and the jeep skidded to a stop.

            “Leave him!” the passenger said.  “Leave him, he’s dead!”

            “No, he’s not!” said Sharon and Sam at the same time.  Nat had the terrified Allen Jones clinging to her and couldn’t move, but Sharon and Sam jumped down and ran back for Sir Stephen.  He was lying still on the ground with his legs crushed, the right one twisted so badly that his foot was facing in the wrong direction.  They grabbed his arms and began dragging him back to the jeep.

            The driver got out of the jeep and came stumbling over to help them.  “We have a hospital!  We have a hospital!  We have doctors!” she said over and over.

            She helped Sharon and Sam load Sir Stephen into the back seat, on the other side of Natasha from Jones.  As they did, Nat saw Sir Stephen’s eyes flicker open and he squinted at her a moment before letting them close again.  Could he possibly be awake?  She decided there was no way.  If he’d been even _half_ conscious he would have been screaming in pain.

            A hospital probably wouldn’t do them much good, Nat thought.  Sir Stephen didn’t _need_ one, he only needed time, and there was nothing to stop the colossus from following them all the way to the refinery.  They needed to get on a boat.

            “What the hell is going on?” the passenger whimpered.  With the driver still helping with Sir Stephen, it was Sharon who got into the driver’s seat and hit the gas.

            “Archaeology!” Nat told him.

            The colossus had long legs and a lengthy stride that let it cover ground astonishingly fast, even as each step groaned with the effort of swinging tonnes of stone.  It could overtake people on foot without a problem, but the jeep was faster, and they quickly left the stone giant behind as they bumped across the rough landscape back to the road.  That made for smoother going as they headed towards the giant tanks and smokestacks of the refinery.

            People were still out and about there.  Some of them were doing a few tasks in the last bit of waning daylight, but most had gathered on the ring road that surrounded the facility so they could squint at the eastern end of the island, trying to figure out what was going on in that direction.  Seeing the approaching colossus silhouetted against the last dull orange of the sunset, a few were leaving to take cover.  Others, maybe not believing their eyes or maybe just frozen, remained to stare.

            “Coming through!” Sharon shouted, honking the horn.  People moved aside to let them pass, then followed in a mass, shouting questions.  Nobody bothered trying to answer them, and they left the crowd on foot behind.

            “There’s the infirmary!” the woman who’d been driving pointed.  “Right there!  I’ll get somebody!”  She didn’t even wait until Sharon had come to a full stop – she jumped down from the side of the jeep, where she’d been hanging on with Sam, and ran inside.

            The male passenger was lying back and panting as if he thought they were safe now, which of course they were not.  After catching his breath, he pulled his sleeve down over his hand and mopped his forehead.

            “What the devil’s bollocks do you mean, _archaeology_?” he asked Nat.

            “Oh, you know,” said Nat.  “Ancient curses, saving the world, shooting Nazis – archaeology!”  She elbowed Allen Jones in the ribs to make him stop leaning on her, and began checking on Sir Stephen.

            He didn’t look good.  He was lying on his back, his legs crumpled underneath him and his head lolling to one side.  The biking trousers he’d been wearing were soaked right through with blood, which was also all over the seats.  His pale face was a grimace of pain.

            “I couldn’t go any further,” said Jones, grabbing Nat’s arm.  She turned and found him looking at her with pleading eyes, as if begging her forgiveness.  “I couldn’t breathe.  I should have started jogging or something, years ago… I just couldn’t run anymore and he said he would carry me, but then that thing caught up…”

            “He’s fine,” Natasha said.  “We just need to get him off this island.”

            “He’s _not_ fine!  Look at him!” Jones protested.  “At my first job ever, back when I was nineteen, I saw a guy get run over by a logging truck.  His legs looked like that.  We made him comfortable and called somebody, but he died while we were waiting for the ambulance…”

            “He’s _fine_ ,” Nat repeated.  “Trust me, it’s magic.”  She _hated_ saying that.  “He’s recovered from worse.”

            “She speaks the truth,” said Sir Stephen, his voice thin with pain.  “I have.  By this time tomorrow I will be fit to fight again.  The Lady of the Lake was choosy with her gifts, but not un-generous.”

            The driver returned, bringing along two medics who gingerly loaded Sir Stephen onto a stretcher.  Sam went with them as they wheeled him inside, trying as he went to explain that the patient had miraculous healing abilities and would not need surgery.  That left Natasha, Sharon, and Jones outside with the still-distressed passenger, who was hugging himself, running his hands up and down his upper arms.

            “I think I’m in shock,” he was saying.  “I think I need one of those blankets.”

            “Never mind that.  We can’t stay here,” said Nat.  The colossus had killed the injured HYDRA man – that meant it didn’t distinguish between friend and foe.  “Who’s in charge?  Because we need to get everyone back to the mainland as quickly as possible.”  Rock monsters couldn’t possibly swim, but could they walk across the bottom of the sea?  How deep was the Pentland Firth?

            Somewhere on the outer edges of the refinery complex, an alarm began to clang, and the crowd of gawkers scattered in a panic.  The colossus was coming.


	12. Nat the Giant Killer

            The alarm was deafeningly loud.  People came running out of buildings all around, some in uniforms, some in street clothes or even pajamas, and some in firefighting jackets, to react to the emergency.  They reached the street, then stopped and looked around in confusion when they realized nothing was on fire, either.  The colossus wasn’t visible yet, so for what felt like several minutes, though it was probably only a few seconds, people just milled around, asking each other hushed questions.

            Then there was a tremendous groan and crash, and one of the big holding tanks at the east end of the refinery complex collapsed.  From where Natasha was standing she could not see _why_ it had fallen, nor whether there’d been anything in it, and for a split second she was able to hope that it had been empty.  Unfortunately, it had not, and the thousands of gallons of refined oil spilling out of it didn’t take long to find a spark.  It went up with a _whoosh_ , pouring black smoke into the air.

            A moment later, the colossus appeared.  The collapsed tank had coated it in burning oil, meaning it wasn’t just an inhuman lumbering figure forty feet tall, emerging from the smoke like an omen of death – it was also _on fire_.  No wonder most of the refinery employees simply turned and fled, running indoors to hide or down to the docks in the hope of escape.

            Natasha, however, did not move.  Her training had taught her that the moments when she most wanted to panic were when she most needed to stay calm and _think_.  How could she fight something like this?  Those stones had stood on that headland for millennia, all but indestructible.  Sir Stephen seemed to have some theoretical knowledge of magic, but if he’d known how to counter _this_ surely he wouldn’t have been trying to defend himself with a sword and shield.  Or would he?  Maybe he just hadn’t had the time or materials to break the spell.  It didn’t matter anyway, because he was lying half-conscious in the infirmary with his legs crushed.  His healing might be quick, but it took place over hours, not minutes.  Sir Stephen could not help.

            “Natalie!”  Allen Jones, still cowering in the back of the jeep, reached out the window to tug on her jacket.  “We have to run!  Natalie!”

            “Let go of me!” she snapped, jerking away.  Nat had no time for this man or his cowardice right now.  She had to save not only his life but that of every other person on this island, if she could only figure out _how_.  Maybe the refinery did have some explosives.  Maybe somewhere on the island there was some leftover ordinance from the abandoned military base.

            Then she had an inspiration – and its source, oddly enough, was not training or weaponry.  It was _archaeology_.

            The prehistoric people of the Orkneys had merely found slabs of stone broken along their natural grain and set them upright, but there were other stone circles in the British Isles whose creators had gone to a little more effort.  Stonehenge, for example, was made not of shards but of tidy blocks, which had to be quarried.  Before they’d had steel tools to cut through rock, the ancient Britons had used heat.  They would built a fire against a piece of stone to get it hot, then splash cold water on it, which would make it suddenly contract and split.  The colossus was already on fire.  She needed water.

            Sharon had gone to take shelter in the infirmary building.  She was yelling and gesturing from the doorway, urging Jones and Natasha to join her.  Jones was still in the jeep, as if it could somehow protect him.  Nat yanked the door open, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

            “I think there’s a boat waiting,” said Jones, putting his seat belt on.  “Everybody’s gone down that way.  There must be a boat.”

            “Shut up,” said Natasha, starting the engine.  Anywhere else on earth, she would be able to get water from a fire hose, but water was no good for putting out the kinds of fires an oil refinery worried about.  She would have to look elsewhere.  She started the engine, made a sharp u-turn and drove towards the colossus.

            “The other way!  The other way!” wailed Jones, hanging on to the back of the seat in front of him as if for dear life.

            Nat ignored him.  She headed for the colossus, and came to a stop about twenty feet shy of it.  It took no notice of her at first, being occupied in trying to stamp on the would-be firefighters all around it.  Not only did its feet shake the ground, but the head coming off it was intense.  The slabs of slate were beginning to glow dull red from it.

            It seemed to be able to see somehow, since it was able to follow the people fleeing from it.  Could it also hear?  Nat leaned on the horn to get its attention.

            She wasn’t sure if she expected this to work or not, but it did.  The colossus turned and reached out for the jeep, and Nat put the vehicle in reverse to drive away – but not so fast that it couldn’t keep up.  Sir Stephen had said it was like a machine, only following its programming, and its programming seemed to tell it to follow humans who ran.  Hopefully it wasn’t smart enough to figure out that this one _wanted_ to be followed.

            On the edge of the facility there was another _whose_ as a second tank collapsed, and the oil it spilled met the burning residue of the first.  Nat rolled the windows up and drove right on through.  The choking stink of oil and hot rubber filled the jeep, nearly making her choke.  She pulled her shirt up over her mouth and nose and drove onto the ring road.

            From there she spotted what she needed – a big onion-shaped tank with the _Roxxon_ logo painted on it, held up on a high tower and lit from below by two floodlights.  She accelerated towards it, out of the burning puddle.  The jeep suddenly slowed and the ride became bumpy.  The tyres had burned through, and they were now riding the metal rims on the pavement.

            “Get out,” she told Jones.

            “What?” he asked, eyes huge with fear.

            “Get out of the car!” she clarified.

            “We’re still moving!” he protested.  “I’ll get hurt!”

            “Either jump out and get hurt or stay in and get killed, it’s up to you!” said Nat.

            He took a deep breath, opened the door, and let himself fall.  In the rearview mirror, by the light of the fire beyond, Nat saw him land in a heap and roll away into the roadside ditch.  She revved the jeep up as fast as she could, then kicked the door open and somersaulted out while it kept going.

            She didn’t dare look back.  She just bounced to her feet again, grabbed Jones, and forced him ahead of her up a metal ladder that led to an overhead inspection platform.  They had climbed only a few rungs before the jeep impacted with the base of the water tower.

            The structure creaked, but did not fall.  A moment later, however, the burning colossus caught up, and brought the end of one fiery stone arm down on top of the jeep.  That destroyed it, and also weakened one of the tower legs.  The whole thing shifted, and the tank at the top ruptured under the stress.

            In slow motion, gallons upon gallons of cold water came flooding out.  The golem made no effort to avoid it – having destroyed the jeep, it was already straightening up to look for its next victim.  Water poured over it, or splashed back up from the ground, and with a series of rather musical _ping_ sounds, the stone shattered.  Flakes and fragments crumbled off, some still glowing from the heat, followed by larger slabs splitting, and then the whole colossus simply fell apart.  The ground shook again as boulders rolled and bounced away, and while some of them seemed to twitch a couple of times as they came to rest, it was only leftover inertia.  Only seconds later, the stones lay still, all animation extinguished with the flames.

            The last of the burning oil floated on top of the water as it ran into the ditches, and soon the road was steaming, but free of flames.  Nat began to climb down from the inspection tower, then realized Jones hadn’t moved.  He was still clinging to the structure above her, both arms and both legs wrapped around it and his face hidden.

            “Come down,” she told him.  “It’s gone.”

            He whimpered, but didn’t move.

            “Fine, just stay there.  We’ll leave without you,” Nat said.  She didn’t care – he hadn’t lifted a finger to save her from the Red Death’s henchmen, why should she bother herself about what happened to him?

            As she started descending again, Jones realized she might mean it, and began to follow her.  He was shaking so badly that he nearly slipped and fell on top of her.  Nat set off across the muddy, boulder-strewn ground as if she fully intended to leave him behind, and he jogged, panting, after her.  At least he had a _self_ -preservation instinct, she observed.  That was something.

            It had taken only minutes to drive out to the water tower, but with the wreckage and boulders and fires in the way, it took several times that long to walk back.  The refinery complex was in ruins.  Parts of the eastern end were still on fire and the tanks were smoking ruins, but now that the colossus was destroyed people were coming out again.  They had firefighting equipment, and while some poured foam or nitrogen on the flames, others were starting to organize a proper evacuation.  Things were slowly getting back to normal.

            The single ferry at the docks couldn’t take everybody at once, so priority was given to the ill, the injured, and those who wanted to take their families out of the south end village.  With so much going on, nobody seemed too worried about the group of fugitives who’d been brought in just head of the colossus.  Nobody asked Nat any questions when she returned to the infirmary, with the panting and white-faced Jones stumbling along behind her.

            The infirmary was a very busy place.  Workers who’d already been too ill or injured to move were being put on stretchers for transport to the ferry, while those who’d been hurt or burned in the last hour were receiving first aid.  Seeing all the injuries made Natasha remember what Sir Stephen had said to her – _you cannot mean to lead the colossus to more men and women!_ – but she shrugged off her guilt as best she could by telling herself that it wouldn’t have mattered.  The colossus had been programmed to kill people.  If her companions had escaped the island, or if they’d been killed themselves, the colossus would simply have moved on to the next available target.

            Right?

            She eventually found Sharon, Sam, and Sir Stephen in a little curtained-off area where those with critical injuries were waiting for transport.  Sir Stephen was lying on a cot and Sharon was holding his hand, while Sam finished splinting his bruised and lacerated legs.  There was an awful lot of blood on the sheets – they lay over his body heavy and stiff with it – and Sir Stephen’s eyes were closed now as if he were unconscious or sleeping.  That immediately worried Nat.  Sir Stephen’s stories had suggested he remained awake no matter how much pain he was in.  Could it be the colossus had actually finished him?

            Sam’s smile was reassuring.  “I told them not to mess with him,” he said.  “He’s getting better already – I just had them give him some morphine.  It won’t last because he metabolizes it too quickly and they need it for other people, but he won’t suffer as much for a while at least.”

            Nat nodded, relieved.

            “All right, everybody!” called a voice outside in the hall.  “Captain Ibrahim says we’ve got room for a few more!  There’ll be another boat coming for the rest of you in a few hours.  For now, we just need the worst injured!”

            The curtain opened, and a nurse looked in.  “Are you _sure_ you don’t want to send your friend back to the mainland?” she asked, eyeing Sir Stephen uncertainly.

            “No,” said Sam firmly.  “He can’t be moved just yet.  I’m his doctor.  I’ll look after him.”

            Nat looked at Jones, who had sat down in a chair in the corner and was now just staring at infinity, as if he still couldn’t quite take in everything that had happened that day.  She went and put a hand on his shoulder.  “Take this guy,” she told the nurse.  “He’s not well.”  She didn’t know about the man in the jeep from earlier, but Jones was definitely in shock, light-headed and possibly dissociating.

            The nurse nodded, and extended a hand to Jones as Nat helped him up.  “Come with me, Sir,” she said gently.  “What’s your name?”

            “Huh?” he asked.

            “Your name,” the nurse prompted again.  She put an arm around his shoulders to escort him out.

            “Oh.  Allen.  Allen Jones.  I’m from Manhasset,” he said.  “I wasn’t supposed to… that is… I don’t know what happened.  I just came up here to see my daughter.  I’m missing my car club meeting.”

            “It’s going to be fine,” the nurse assured him.  “I’m sure your daughter will be delighted to see you.”

            Little did she know, Natasha thought.

            With Jones gone, and Sam needed to look after Sir Stephen, that left Natasha and Sharon to take care of one last important task.  They needed to go back to the remains of the stone circle to see if any of their things were still there, and to look for any clues the Red Death’s men might have left behind.

            “Now we know where the Grail is _not_ , we have no idea what they might do next,” said Nat.  “I doubt they’re going to just give up, so we need to figure it out.”

            “Does it have to be _tonight_?” asked Sharon, but she stood up and leaned back in a stretch all the same.  “I should be used to this,” she grumbled.  “When you’re trying to solve a case you don’t get breaks.  Even when you’re sleeping, you’re still thinking about it.  I’ve come up with ideas in my dreams, and had to make myself wake up so I could write them down.”

            “Me, too,” said Nat.  “It doesn’t sound very different from spying, actually.  Maybe I should have been a detective instead of an archaeologist.”

            They found a couple of utility flashlights in a closet and put their jackets and boots back on before setting out.  “Why archaeology, of all things?” Sharon asked as they trudged back up the slope.

            “Because when I was a kid I liked _Indiana Jones_ movies,” Nat replied, smiling.

            Sharon smiled back.  “Is it everything you hoped for?” she asked.

            “It’s getting there,” Nat said.

            There was still a faint glow left on the western horizon as the two women approached the ruins of the stone circle – summer nights at this latitude were very short indeed.  They still needed their flashlights, though, to pick out the details of the wreckage on the headland.  The colossus had shredded the chain-link fence and left deep pits where the stones had pulled free of the soil.  These had partially collapsed and were no longer big enough for a human being to fall into, but they were more than enough to stumble over and break an ankle in the darkness.

            The biggest wound on the landscape was where the central stone had come out, tearing apart the gravel and concrete the HYDRA men had used to prop it up – and in front of it was the deep trench that had opened when the light touched the stone.  This was right through the middle of the anthill, and the ants were scurrying around carrying their larvae and eggs, trying to find a safe place to relocate.  When Nat looked into the pit, she found it went all the way to the bedrock, which had a perfect rectangle, perhaps the size of a fridge, cut into it, as if something had once stood there.  An enormous treasure chest, maybe?  Nat had no idea.  There was certainly nothing in it now.

            She straightened up, and as she did, a glint of colour caught her eye.  When she pointed the flashlight beam directly at it, she saw a group of ants moving a large pebble, which flickered blue-green where the light hit it.  Nat shooed the insects away and picked it up, and found half of a mud-encrusted cabochon gem, cracked in two along the narrow axis.  Brushing the dirt away, she discovered a series of pits on the flat side of it, and realized that of course, this was part of Sir Stephen’s map gem.  It had to be inserted in the big stone so the light could fall on it, and that opened the Grail pit.  It would make perfect sense if it were a puzzle in a video game.  Whether it made sense in real life, Nat didn’t know anymore.

            It had worked, though – the light had fallen on the stone and the pit had somehow dug itself up, but there was no Grail in it.  What did that mean?  Had it never really been part of their reality to begin with, or had somebody else already dug it up and taken it away?  If it were really as powerful and evil as Sir Stephen had implied, why had they not heard about it before?  Surely whoever found it wouldn’t have just sat quietly on it for a thousand years.

            “I found our stuff!” Sharon called.  “Over here!”

            “Oh, good.”  Nat zipped up her jacket a little tighter, and went to join her.  Their things were still mostly in the pile where the HYDRA men had left them, although some of the guns had been scattered and broken by the actions of the colossus.  Sharon managed to find her badge and her service revolver, although she wasn’t sure whether the latter were still in working order.  Nat’s clothes and possessions were muddy, but salvageable, and her purse was fortunately still there, with her money, her ID, and the two metal pendants.

            “I can’t believe how lucky we were,” Sharon said.  “Imagine if it had been here.”

            “That doesn’t help us figure out why it’s not,” Nat said.  If it had been moved hundreds of years ago, there might not have been much trace left to begin with – and after all the upheaval, there certainly wasn’t now.

            “Hello?” a voice asked weakly.

            Nat and Sharon stopped talking at once.  The wind had died down after sunset, and over its rustle in their ears, the two women could just barely hear the word.  They looked at each other, and once they were sure they’d both heard it, they got to their feet to search for a source, shining their flashlight beams into the darkness.

            “Hello!” Sharon called out.  “Where are you?”

            “Here!” said the voice, hoarse and raspy.  “Over here!”

            Nat moved towards it, carefully inspecting the ground ahead of her to make sure she didn’t fall into one of the holes.  The ground was damp from the drizzly climate, and the pits were full of mud and slimy grass.  Curled up at the edge of one of them, trying to hide from the weather while cradling a badly broken arm, was one of the HYDRA men.

            Sharon knelt down beside him and took out her phone.  “I’ll call the refinery,” she said.  “This man needs to be in a hospital.”

            “Wait.”  Natasha put out her hand.  “Before we do that, I want him to answer some questions.”

            She looked the guy over.  He was very young, maybe in his early twenties, with light brown hair, gray eyes, and freckles.  This was somebody Natasha would have passed on the street and never taken a second look at, but job experience had taught her that real-world evil was like that.  It didn’t laugh maniacally or twirl its mustaches.  It was very ordinary, very banal.  There was a reason nobody ever suspected the guy next door of being a serial killer, until the bodies started turning up.

            His face, bright with relief a moment ago, darkened at her words.  “I’m not gonna tell you anything,” he said, swallowing hard.

            “Really?” Nat asked skeptically.

            He shook his head.

            “Not even why the logo on your jacket belongs to an organization that’s supposedly been out of business for seventy years?”  She pointed to it.

            The man glanced down at the embroidery on his shoulder, then raised his head and stuck out his lower lip.  “Nope,” he said.

            Nat squatted down to be on his eye level.  “Okay, then, I’ll tell you what.  Nobody knows you’re out here but me and her.  It gets really damned cold in the Orkneys overnight, even in the summer, and you’ve lost enough blood to severely compromise your body’s ability to thermoregulate.  So tell us what we want to know, and we’ll call somebody to take you to the nice warm infirmary at the other end of the island.  Most of the doctors evacuated with their patients, but our friend is still there… although,” she added, cocking her head, “you might prefer to die rather than let a black man patch you up, seeing as how you’re a Nazi and all.”

            The man remained silent.

            “Or you can continue to sit there and pout like a child,” Nat went on, “in which case _we_ will go sit in the warm infirmary and drink hot chocolate with little marshmallows in it, and come back for you in the morning.  If you’re still alive, maybe you’ll talk to us then.”  There’d been a time when Natasha would have actually carried through on this threat.  She wouldn’t do it now, but she needed the man to believe she would.  Even without magic, believing something could be as good as the truth.

            “You won’t do that,” he said, voice shaking a little.  “You’re not that cruel.  You think you’re one of the good guys.”

            Natasha set her jaw.  This guy had no idea, she thought, how cruel she could be when she needed to.  She stared into his eyes fixedly for a moment, refusing to blink until he _had_ to look away, and then she got to her feet again.

            “Sleep well,” she said, and began to walk away.

            She did not look back – but Sharon hesitated a moment, and Nat heard the man say to her, “you’re not really gonna leave me, are you?”

            “That depends,” said Sharon.  “Hey, Natalie!  You said these guys are Nazis?”

            “Absolutely!” Nat agreed.

            “I am not a Nazi!” the man snapped.  “I don’t want to put anybody in a concentration camp!  I just want them out of Britain!  England should be _English_!”

            Although she did not turn around, Nat stopped.  “England hasn’t been _English_ since the Norman invasion,” she said.  “Even then, the Anglo-Saxons were also invaders, who took the land from the native Celts after the Romans left – that’s what the King Arthur stories are _about_.  The ‘English’ have always been immigrants.”

            “My Gran fought in World War II,” Sharon added to the man.  “I know what _she_ would do with you, but I think I prefer letting you freeze to death.  It’ll give you more time to think about your choices.”

            There was no response from the man, and a moment later Sharon was at Nat’s side, walking down the slope back towards the ruins.  It took almost another full minute, but eventually it worked – the HYDRA soldier decided they were serious, and began to panic.

            “Wait!” he shouted.  “Wait!  Come back!  Don’t leave me!”

            “Keep moving,” Nat whispered to Sharon.  “Don’t even look like you’re _thinking_ about stopping until he actually gives us something.”

            “Come back!” he cried desperately.  “I’ll tell you!  I will!”

            They kept going.

            “You want to know where Totenkopf went, right?” he shouted.  “He’s gone to find the fragments!”

            Now, _that_ was information.  Nat stopped and looked over her shoulder, though she did not actually turn around.  “What fragments?”

            “The fragments of the Grail!” said the man.  “I don’t know how they work but I’ll tell you everything I _do_ know!  Come back!” he pleaded.

            At that, Natasha decided it was time to have mercy.  She walked back, very slowly, and knelt down next to the man.  “Tell us,” she ordered.

            He coughed a couple of times.  “We’d been… we spent years collecting them.  Fragments of the Grail.  Somebody thousands of years ago had contained bits of it in thee little pendants.  They’re made of iron, and there’s a gold bead on them to channel the energy out.  They can make a lie come true if you convince somebody to believe it.  I don’t know how it works!”  The man coughed again, and licked his lips.  There was blood on them.

            “Slow down,” said Nat.  She didn’t want him to kill himself through sheer panic.

            “We were gonna take them to the Druids,” the man said.  “They had some way to find the original if there were enough pieces to show them the echoes or something, but then Mr. Pierce left them in a suitcase in his car and somebody stole it.  There were only two or three left, so Zola decided to…” his voice had been slowly dropping to a whisper, and he cleared his throat trying to get it back.  “To use them to bring back Totenkopf and the map, by creating the statues.  And then…” he coughed harder.  Pink foam bubbled out of the corners of his mouth.

            Nat’s heart rate jumped up as she remembered something from Sir Stephen’s stories, something that hadn’t seem terribly important at the time.  The man named Heinrich had died in the middle of passing on information.  The Red Death had put some kind of spell on his followers to ensure that any who betrayed him would die.

            “Stop talking,” she ordered.  “Take a deep breath.  You’ve said enough for now.  We’ll get you to a doctor.”  Maybe whatever damage the enchantment had done could still be cured.

            It was too late, though.  The man convulsed.  The foam in his mouth turned red and he made a gurgling sound, then went limp against the piece of masonry.  Nat reached out to take his pulse, and found to her horror that her fingers sank into his wrist, as if under the skin his body had turned to jelly.  She quickly snatched her had back, and saw that her fingers had left an impression as if in play-dough.  Blood was oozing through the skin.  Nat scrambled away and stood up, wiping her hand on her jacket, her stomach turning.  She would not have expected anything to actually disgust her after the life she’d led, but _that_ was something else entirely.

            “I forgot about that,” said Sharon softly, meaning the sequence in Sir Stephen’s story.  When Nat turned her flashlight on her friend, she saw the other woman pale-faced, covering her mouth with one hand.

            “Me, too,” said Nat – though she hadn’t, really.  It wasn’t so much that she’d _forgotten_ as that she’d thought of the event as part of the fantasy medieval setting the story took place in, something that couldn’t intrude into the her real world.  She should have known better by now.

            “What do we do with him?” Sharon asked.

            They’d killed a number of the HYDRA men in the gunfight and had simply left them to lie, but this was different somehow.  “Well… he might be a Nazi but presumably his family loves him,” said Nat.  “We should call somebody at the refinery to come and get him.  And the other bodies, too.”

            Sharon nodded and dialed the number.

            A few minutes later the refinery’s small ambulance arrived, rumbling and bumping up the old dirt road.  Sharon and Nat led them to the HYDRA man’s body, and the sight of it shocked the driver and medics as much as it had the women.

            “What _happened_ to him?” the driver asked.

            “I don’t know,” said Nat.  “He just died, right in front of us.  There are a bunch more bodies back at the ruins, but those ones were shot,” she added.

            The medics covered the corpse with a sheet, but Natasha and Sharon had to sit in the back of the ambulance with it for the return trip.  They could see the blood soaking through as the body continued to liquify, the shapes of the man’s face and limbs slowly collapsing.  Both of them tried to find other places to look, and yet the sight seemed to draw their eyes like a magnet.

            “I just didn’t think of it,” Nat said quietly.  “It was… it was part of the story.  I wasn’t _trying_ to torture him to death.”  She’d done that before, of course, when it had been necessary to complete a mission, but she’d sworn she would never to it again.  She’d decided to just lie low and be a _normal_ person who didn’t have to hurt anybody.

Yet here she was, at the end of a day of torture, gunfire, and death.  Her victims had been bad people, and she did feel a grim satisfaction at the idea that _they_ would not be able to hurt anyone anymore… but she hadn’t _meant_ to kill the man in the hole, and yet he’d died a worse death than any of the others.  Murder just seemed to be part of her makeup, as inescapable as the colour of her eyes.  “If I’d remembered sooner, maybe I would have stopped in time.”

            “If _I’d_ remembered sooner, I could have stopped _you_ ,” said Sharon, and to Nat’s surprise, pulled her in for a hug.  “I’m an accessory.”

            “But I’m the killer,” said Nat.  That’s all she’d ever been.  That was the ugly truth, and all the beautiful lies in the world couldn’t un-make it.  Maybe not even the Holy Grail itself could do that.

            “I won’t arrest you,” Sharon said, patting her back.  “I promise.”


	13. Allen Jones' Brilliant Idea

            Natasha didn’t sleep well that night.  She was used to nightmares – in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever had what might count as a _good_ dream – but these were _intense_ , and horrifying.  In each, she was pumping somebody for information while that person disintegrated in front of her, yet even as she watched them die she kept demanding more.  Some of them were strangers, foreign agents or followers of the Red Death, but others were people she knew, like Sam, or Sue from Dundee, or even Allen Jones.  He begged her, as his body crumbled, to have mercy on her father, to which she only replied in a cold voice that he was not her father and never had been.

            She woke up curled into a tight, trembling ball, listening to her phone jingle.  She had a text.

            Nat and the others had spent the night on cots in the half-empty infirmary.  Another ship was supposed to arrive at eight thirty in the morning to take them and the remaining refinery employees back to the mainland.  She rolled over and picked her phone up off the floor next to the cot, where she’d left it to charge.

            “That better be important,” grumbled Sharon from the next cot over.

            Natasha tapped the icon to bring up the message.  It was from Dr. Hughes at Dundee, and said _paternity positive.  Who is it?_

            Rather than reply, Nat just set the phone down and shut her eyes again.  So… Jones _was_ her father, at least genetically.  That didn’t really surprise her.  The whole point of this mess seemed to be that the lies were plausible, and came true in plausible sorts of ways.  The Loch Ness Monster was a type of seal instead of a surviving dinosaur, and Allen Jones had the right DNA to have fathered Natasha.  She told herself that she didn’t care.  He was still a lie, and he still hadn’t lifted a finger to try to help her yesterday.

            Nat could take care of herself, of course, but that wasn’t the point.  If Jones really believed he loved her, he could at least make an attempt.  Maybe it _was_ true that somewhere deep down, Nat had always wanted a father, but she didn’t want one who was a coward.

            The boat half an hour late, but it did come.  The Pentland Ferries company had re-routed one of their vessels, and brought breakfast for the remaining survivors.  Nat and the others boarded along with the refinery workers, each stopping to give their names and addresses to a man who was keeping a tally.  Tempting as it was to say she lived in a mansion in Morven Hills and see if it came true, Nat instead supplied the address of her actual flat in Dundee.  Jones gave them his fictional address in Manhasset, which was no worse a lie than anything else about him – but Sir Stephen had no permanent address.

            “He’s my fiancé,” Nat said, sticking to the lie she’d already used once without consequences.  “He lives with me.”

            “Congratulations,” the man said, writing that down.

            They continued up the gangway.  Sir Stephen was still bruised, and was suffering from a headache as the morphine they’d given him wore off, but although he was leaning on Sam to walk his legs were under him, bearing most of his weight.  It was enough to make Nat wonder if anything _could_ actually kill him, and whether Sir Stephen himself ever wondered the same.

            “Will people not think it strange that we would live in the same house, not yet being married?” Sir Stephen asked Natasha.  “I would not want you to compromise your reputation.”

            “Nope,” Nat said.

            Sir Stephen waited for more explanation, but she didn’t give him any.  She was not in the mood.

            Once the ferry was underway, the crew brought out breakfast: sausages, eggs, toast, and fried tomatoes, with fruit juice and plenty of hot tea and coffee.  Sir Stephen was ravenous as usual and dug right in, finishing his first plateful before Nat had even bothered breaking the yolks on her eggs.  Everybody else ate more slowly, particularly Natasha and Sharon.  Neither had much appetite after what they’d seen and done the previous night.

            “Where did you girls go after the first boat left?” Sam asked.  He looked around at the other survivors, sitting in the passenger benches with paper plates in their laps.  “I keep hearing rumors somebody brought in a guy who died of _ebola_?”

            Nat and Sharon glanced at each other.  “One of the HYDRA guys got left behind, and he was still alive,” said Sharon.

            “We questioned him,” Nat added, “and then he just died, right in front of us.”  She blinked a couple of times, trying to make the images from her nightmares stop dancing in front of her eyes.  Ebola was probably as good a diagnosis as any.  Hemorrhagic fevers caused internal bleeding that went on until the organs simply fell apart.  Those took days, though, while this had set in within minutes.

            “As happened to Heinrich the Potter,” said Sir Stephen, his mouth full.

            “Yeah,” Sharon sighed, “although we didn’t remember that until after it happened.”  She still felt guilty about it, too.  It was nice, Nat thought, not to be the only one.

            Sam must have heard the same note in Sharon’s voice that Natasha had, because he leaned forward a little.  “Are you two gonna be okay?” he asked cautiously.

            Any of Natasha’s bosses or colleagues in the spy business would have simply asked what she’d learned, not interested in the man’s death or its effect on her.  Sam’s concern was a privilege she had rarely enjoyed and one she didn’t feel she deserved, and it took her a moment to get the lump out of her throat before she could answer him.

            “I’ve seen worse,” said Nat.

            “I haven’t,” Sharon said, “but I’ve seen things that weren’t much better.”

            “That’s not what I asked,” Sam said gently.

            “We’ll live,” Nat assured him, and then when he started to correct her _again_ , she added, “we’re fine, okay?”

            “Okay,” said Sam.

            It was time to change the subject.  “Anyway,” Nat said, “from what he managed to tell us, we can get an idea of what the Red Death is gonna do next.”  She had to stick to the _important_ stuff.  They were saving the world, probably, and the emotions she’d been trained to suppress were not essential to that.  Nat dug into her purse, and pulled out the two pendants, still wrapped in plastic.  “He’s going to go looking for more of these.  Apparently they’re fragments of the Grail, and if he’s got enough of them the Druids can use them to find the whole one.  That means we have to find them first.”

            Sam nodded, chewing thoughtfully on a forkful of tomatoes.  “What do we do once we find them?” he asked.

            “I don’t know,” Natasha admitted  “Bury them or something.  Or… I don’t know, there has to be _some_ way to get rid of them permanently.”  She looked at Sir Stephen.  Out of all of them, he’d be the most likely to know for sure.

            “We could melt them down,” Sam suggested.

            Sir Stephen scraped a few last crumbs into his mouth.  “I would not like to try destroying something that is made of the very force of creation,” he observed.

            He might have a point.  Nat fingered the plastic wrap, thinking.  Zola had known that Nat had taken his pendant from him, so why hadn’t he or the Red Death had somebody search her possessions?  Maybe the fragments could only be used once.  He evidently _hadn’t_ known that Sir Stephen had one, or he would have taken it while searching the police locker room for the shield.

            “Maybe we can drop them in the ocean,” Sharon said.  “Somewhere like the Challenger Deep.”

            That would make them very _difficult_ to retrieve, but not impossible.  “What were you planning to do with the Grail, once you found it?” Nat asked Sir Stephen.

            “We had not decided,” he replied.  “The important task was to find it before the Red Death could.  The same must now be true of the fragments.  Find them first.”

            “Yeah, okay,” said Sam, “so how do we do _that_?”

            “Easy,” said Sharon.  “We know who stole them out of Pierce’s car.”

            This meant nothing to Sam or Sir Stephen, but Natasha perked up immediately.  “Mick O’Herlihy!” she said.

            “Exactly!”  Having figure this out apparently gave Sharon a bit of her appetite back, because she speared a sausage on her fork and bit the end off it.  “That was what he got arrested for, stealing stuff out of cars.  By the time Pierce tracked him down, he’d already sold them all or given them away, and didn’t know where they were anymore, so they…”  She paused, perhaps remembering the blood at the warehouse crime scene.  They now knew what _that_ meant, too.

            “So they killed him,” Natasha finished for her.  “They stabbed him with that magic dagger the Red Death had, and used his blood to bring the two statues to life.”

            “Magic cannot create life,” Sir Stephen repeated.

            “Yeah, but first they must have used one of their remaining fragments and convinced somebody that the legends about you and the Red Death were true, and that you’d been turned to stone in the middle of your fight,” said Nat.  “Then the statues would technically already be alive.”  She hoped that made more sense than she felt like it did.  “In that case, the magic would only need to _restore_ life.  The Grail is a force of creation.  It should be able to create life, no problem.”  It had, for example, created Allen Jones.  “And,” she added, “we know at least one of the people Mr. O’Herlihy gave a fragment to.”

            “Exactly,” said Sharon.  “There is no way the Loch Ness Monster has just always been there and we never noticed it.  He gave one to _Darren_ O’Herlihy, who’s got to be a relative, so we need to go back to Loch End and see where he went next.”

            Sam was amazed.  “How did you ever figure all that out?” he asked.

            “I’m a _detective_!” said Sharon, annoyed that he would ask.

            “I’m an archaeologist,” Natasha added.  “Figuring stuff out based on clues in context is what we _do_.”  Another beautiful lie, she thought – figuring stuff out based on clues was what spies and assassins did sometimes, too.  “You must do the same thing when you diagnose a disease.”

            “Yeah, but I can look through textbooks and consult with experts,” said Sam.  “There’s no textbook for this.”

            Nat shook her head.  “Anyway,” she said, “if _we_ can work this out, we have to assume that the Red Death can, too, and that he’ll also go looking for O’Herlihy.  We have to find him first.”

            “No rest for the wicked,” Sam sighed. 

* * *

 

            Sir Stephen was on his third helping of fry-up and upset about being interrupted when the ferry put in at Galltair, but he also looked stronger and was walking better.  Maybe food accelerated his healing, Nat thought.  Sugars and proteins were the building blocks of the body, after all.  Having more of them available probably allowed his superpowered immune system to work faster.

            She got that far in her train of thought, then realized she was expecting something to make _sense_ again.  When was she going to learn?

            It was sunny but brisk on the mainland, with the Orkney winds going right through even the thickest jackets and sweaters.  Even so, there was a crowd waiting at the pier.  Friends and relatives of the refinery employees must have come in from all over the UK to meet them and make sure they were safe.  Allen Jones wasn’t among the, but that figured – Nat didn’t care anyway.

            “Excuse me,” said a voice, as they made their way through the crowd to the car park.

            The speaker was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, with long steel-gray hair up in a fat bun that was quickly being unwound by the wind.  She was wearing a dark blue windbreaker over an off-white Aran sweater, and her eyes were on Nat.

            “Are you Natalie Jones?” she asked.

            “Yes,” Nat replied carefully.  As always, being recognized worried her.  Zola and the Red Death knew what she looked like and now they knew she was working with Sir Stephen.  What sort of trap might they have laid for her?

            “Oh, good!” the woman said, relieved.  “He did say I’d know you when I saw you.  Your Dad’s in the Oak and Thistle,” she explained.  “He’s been there all night and we haven’t gotten much out of him besides that he came here to see you and it’s all gone pear-shaped.  I think you’d better take him home.”

            Nat’s first reaction was to groan.  She didn’t want to see Jones.  He’d been a piece of luggage from the beginning and she was no longer remotely tempted by the idea of actually treating him like her father.  At the same time, though, it wouldn’t be right to just leave him there.  He had nowhere else to go, and since Natasha had more or less created him, he was her responsibility… even though that was exactly the opposite of how parents and children were supposed to work.

            “All right,” she said with a sigh.  “I’ll go get him.”  She pushed her hair out of her face, only to have the wind blow it right back, and turned to her companions.  “You guys wanna go get our car?” she asked.  “Also, somebody should really find out if Mr. Stanley had any family.”  The Sea Dog’s death hadn’t been as awful as the HYDRA soldier’s, but it, too, was going to haunt her.

            “I’ll do it,” said Sharon.  “It won’t be the first time I’ve delivered bad news.”

            Nat nodded.  “Sorry,” she said to the woman who’d brought the message.  “You are?”

            “Ellen McComb,” was the reply.  “I own the pub.  I’ll show you where it is.”

            It was hardly necessary to have a guide.  The Oak and Thistle was the only pub in town, located behind an old-fashioned storefront with the traditional hanging sign.  The inside was small but cozy, with an ugly tartan carpet on the floor and wood-panelled walls decorated with old photographs of the stark, craggy Scottish shores.  A collection of ceramic and metal tankards, no two alike, hung on hooks from the rafters.

            The place was also stuffed to the gills with people, probably more than it normally saw in a month.  Not all the refinery survivors’ relatives had come to pick them up yet, and many of those who were still waiting had decided to do so in the pub.  Others had come simply to seek solace in alcohol, or to watch the news, which was playing on a tiny antique TV on the bar.

            “Authorities still have no explanation for the events on the island of Flotta last night,” the anchorman was saying.  “Rumors of the supernatural have been bolstered by this mobile footage, which appears to show a giant, fiery human figure.”  The shot switched to shaky, blurry phone video, which showed the burning figure of the colossus chasing after Natasha and Jones in the jeep.  It was only a few seconds long, then started again, in slow motion and with the figure enlarged.  “Roxxon officials have not commented on the incident,” the anchorman went on, “or on the rumors of a firefight on the island…”

            “There he is,” McComb said, pointing.

            Allen Jones was sitting in fake leather armchair next to where the fireplace had once been.  The aperture had been bricked up long ago, and now had a pointing of burning logs propped in it while heat was provided by a pair of old-fashioned radiators.  Jones had an empty teacup in his hands, and was staring blankly at the wall above the mantlepiece.  There was another painting, this one of a circle of stones not unlike the one at Kracness, in an impressionistic style that reminded Nat of Monet.

            She stood there a moment, not sure how to approach him.  Nat _wanted_ to just tell him to get up, go home, and quit feeling sorry for himself, but there was the small problem that she didn’t think he _had_ a home.  Whatever she ended up saying to him, she certainly wasn’t about to address him as ‘Dad’.

            Before she could speak to him, however, he looked up and noticed _her_.

            “Natalie?” he asked.  His eyes were lined with red, as if he hadn’t slept or as if he’d been crying, and his voice contained both relief and fear.  He was glad she’d come, but terrified of what she might say to him.

            “Hello, Allen,” she said, and took a step closer.  There was a second chair next to Jones’ – another man had been sitting in this, but he got up to make room for Natasha.  She nodded thanks and took the seat.

            “Mrs. McComb thinks you need to leave,” said Nat.

            “I’m not drunk,” Jones replied firmly.

            “I think she knows that,” Nat said.

            Jones shook his head, and heaved one of the deepest signs Natasha had ever heard.  “I’m sorry,” he said.

            She managed not to roll her eyes, but it was a near thing.  “I _told_ you, Sir Stephen _chose_ to protect you,” she said.  “The Lady of the Lake gave him some kind of magic to help him heal faster.  He’s already walking again.  You can come and see him, he’s just fine.”

            “No, no, not Sir Stephen,” said Jones.  “Everything.  Everything else.  It’s all my fault.  Not just your friend getting hurt, but us all being tied up and Captain Stanley being killed.  If I’d just _done_ something instead of sitting there like a rock… but I couldn’t.  I don’t know what was wrong with me,” he whimpered.  “There they are, beating the tar out of you, and I did _nothing_.”

            Nat hesitated.  She’d been fuming angry with him over that all night, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be angry with _himself_.  She’d done enough terrible things in her life that she didn’t like seeing people blame themselves for things that weren’t really their fault.  She didn’t want to touch Jones himself, but she put a hand on the arm of the chair he was sitting in.

            “You’re not trained for this,” she pointed out.  “The rest of us have some experience defending ourselves.  There’s me, and then Sharon’s a cop, Sam was a soldier, and Sir Steve… I guess he was a soldier, too.  We’re trained to react to a threat.  You’re not.  You panicked and froze, and that’s…” she paused, trying to think of the right words.  It definitely wasn’t _okay_ , but it was… “that’s natural enough.”

            “No!” Jones protested.  “No, it’s not, because I’m also your _father_.  Even if you don’t think I am, _I_ think I am.  I remember the day you were born, and I remember thinking _so this is what it feels like_.  I thought that was it, that I’d fallen in love with this little person and I would rather die than let anybody hurt you.  Then the moment came and I… I did _nothing_ ,” he moaned, covering his face.  The break in his voice sounded suspiciously like tears.

            Once again, Nat didn’t know what to say.  For a moment she struggled, and then she tried, “I forgive you.”

            Jones raised his head again sharply, looking at her as if she’d started speaking in tongues.  “What?”

            “I forgive you,” Natasha repeated.  “Insofar as that goes.”  Maybe the magic of the Grail fragments was working again because now that she saw how miserable his cowardice had made _him_ , it was true.  “I mean, it wasn’t your fault.  You had no idea what you were getting into.  It was _our_ fault for bringing you along.”  This quest had turned out to be incredibly dangerous, more so than any of them had realized, and they’d dragged along this old man who was even less prepared for it than they.  Part of the reason they’d done so was because Nat was suspicious of him, but she honestly couldn’t see what _use_ he’d be to the Red Death and Zola.  He was certainly none to them.  “So I’m the one who should be sorry.  I shouldn’t have done that.”

            “You’re the one who said I would have nowhere else to go,” said Jones sadly.

            Nat winced – there was that, too.  He couldn’t go home when he’d get there to find that the street where he thought he lived at number sixteen actually ended at number twelve.  “I’m sorry about that, too.”  She was sorry about all of it, especially the stupid lie that had created him in the first place.

            “I should have at least _said_ something,” Jones said.  “I thought about… when we were all there in the circle and the pit opened up and there was nothing in it, I thought about telling him that _I_ knew where the Grail was, and maybe it would come true like you said the other stuff did.  Then I could make him let you go in exchange for the information, but I thought instead of taking me he might… he might threaten _you_ to make me tell, and I couldn’t…” he lowered his head again.  “Or maybe I was just a coward looking for excuses.”

            A chill washed over Nat.  Now, _there_ was an idea.  She couldn’t tell anybody that Allen knew where the Grail was because he had no reason to know.  Unless he knew because he’d been created by it… but no, if that came true then Sir Stephen, and more importantly the Red Death, would know as well – they were products of the Grail, too.  But maybe… just maybe…

            “Allen,” said Nat.

            “Yeah?” he asked miserably.

            She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.  “I think you might be on to something.  Come on, we gotta go find the others.”  Nat helped him to his feet.

            “Wait,” Allen protested, looking around.  “I owe Mrs. McComb some money for letting me stay…”

            “I’ll pay it,” said Nat.  “Come on, I need to try something.  You may actually be a genius.”

            She paid the pub bill, then went in search of the rest of their party.  They found Sam, Sharon, and Sir Stephen shivering in the wind just outside a little brick and plaster building by the docks.  This had once been somebody’s house, but was now the harbourmaster’s office, identified as such by a little metal plaque on the wall.  The harbourmaster himself, a middle-aged, craggy-faced man in a black knitted cap, was listening in evident distress as they explained that the Sea Dog was dead and his boat adrift somewhere north of Flotta.

            Nat hurried up to them, dragging Allen behind her.  “Guys!” she panted, and dug one hand into her purse.  “Guys, listen to me, I know where the Grail is!”  Her fingers peeled back the plastic wrap, and touched the metal pendants inside it.  “I just figured it out!”

            The conversation stopped, and everybody stared at her.  Natasha’s heart began to sink.  They didn’t believe her, and it wouldn’t work if they didn’t believe her.

            “The Grail?” asked the harbourmaster.  “As in, the _Holy_ Grail?  From King Arthur?”

            “Yes, that one!” said Nat.  “I figured out who moved it and where!”

            “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Sharon told her.  “Where is it?”

            Then Natasha felt it – a little _snap_ at her fingertips, like touching a metal doorknob in a dry room, and suddenly it all made _perfect sense_.  A grin spread across her face.  “Okay,” she said, taking her hand out of her purse again so she could gesture with it.  “Nobody could have been there to move the Grail in the last few years, because we would have seen evidence of it.  That means it must have been moved a very long time ago, and…”

            She got that far, and then stopped in mid-sentence.  Just in time.

            “Yes?” Sam prompted.

            Nat had just remembered another important detail, this one from both Sir Stephen’s story and their own experience.  “I don’t think I can tell you here,” she said.  “I’m not sure I can tell you _anywhere_.  Zola’s been listening in on our plans when we can’t see him, remember?”  Why hadn’t she thought of that on the ferry, when they’d been talking about going to find O’Herlihy?  Zola might have been invisible under their table or something, listening the whole time.

            Sharon breathed in sharply.  “You’re right,” she said, and must have made the same connection Nat had, because she added, “shit!  We’ve gotta go find that O’Herlihy guy _now_ , don’t we?”

            “Yes, we do,” Nat agreed.

            “Wait,” the harbourmaster said.  “What the devil are you on about?  What’s any of this got to do with what happened to Old Stan?”

            “We cannot tell you,” said Sir Stephen.  “We are sorry about the fate of your friend, but we fear to say more, lest you prove to be a goblin in disguise.”

            They left the poor harbourmaster standing there very confused, and piled into the car to head south again.  Like Natasha, Sharon had charged her phone overnight, and was consulting Google as they began the trip with Nat in the driver’s seat.

            “Okay, here’s the _Loch Ness Monster_ tag… still trending,” Sharon noted.  “Darren O’Herlihy is… uh-oh.”

            “What?” asked several voices at once.

            “You can’t just say _uh-oh_!” Sam added.

            “ _Self-described monster-hunter Darren O’Herlihy has vanished from the public eye_ ,” Sharon read aloud.  “ _The hotel at Loch End has become a meeting place for scientists and media interested in the monster, but O’Herlihy himself has not spoken to any of them since asking that they name the species_ Nessaphoca michaelis _, after his late brother_.”

            So that was the connection – Darren O’Herlihy had gotten the pendant from his brother Mick, the petty thief, and had unwittingly activated it to bring the Loch Ness Monster to life.  Sharon probably knew the person who’d had to deliver the news that Mick was dead, Nat realized.  Once Dr. Hughes had identified the blood, and they’d realized there was far too much for the person who’d lost it to have lived, somebody from the police in Inverness would have had to inform the next of kin.

            “Is he still _in_ the hotel?” asked Sam.

            “It doesn’t say,” said Sharon.  “I’m guessing not, though.  The media wouldn’t give him any peace if he were.”

            That could be good or bad, Nat thought.  If the man were actually missing, then hopefully the Red Death wouldn’t be able to track him down, either.  On the other hand, maybe he’d vanished because HYDRA had already found him.

            “So he’s hiding,” said Sam.

            “Maybe.  I’ve got an idea,” Sharon said.  “I won’t tell it here, though – like Natalie said, Zola might be listening.  Let’s just go to Inverness.”

            As they headed south again, under heavy gray skies that promised rain but never actually delivered it, Natasha found herself thinking about several different things.  The first, of course, was the urgency of finding O’Herlihy.  It was reassuring that Sharon had a theory, but the only way to know for sure was to check it out, and Nat had an awful mental picture of breaking into the man’s home and finding nothing but another pool of blood.  Even if the Red Death hadn’t already gotten there, he was probably on his way, and he had an entire secret society behind him while they were just five random people.

            She also thought about Allen Jones.  He was going to have to stay with them for the time being, and that was okay as long as they were just visiting libraries, doing Google searches, and driving up and down the country.  It would be different when things came to a fight again.  Allen had already proved that he was worse than useless in combat, and that meant that somehow the others were going to have to keep him safe.  Like any other predator, the Red Death would go after the weakest member of the herd.

            Mostly, however, she thought about her theory.  It was really only a hypothesis at this point – it had popped into her head at the same moment as the shock that seemed to signify the activation of a Grail fragment, but beyond that there wasn’t a lot to support it.  It was based on an awful lot of assumptions, most of which she had no evidence for.  She hoped she wasn’t just making it up.  The reason the Grail pit on Flotta had been empty was because William the Conqueror had taken its contents away.

            The Red Death had been close to William of Normandy before turning on him when they landed in England.  That meant William himself had probably known about the Grail, and would likely have gone looking for it himself.  Maybe that was even part of the reason he’d had the famous Domesday Book put together – an inventory of the entire country would be a great way to start the search.  In the process, like Sir Galahad before him William would have learned about the Grail’s true nature, and maybe he would have tried to prevent anybody else from ever finding it.

            In the fantasy world where this had all happened, that would be the reason the Grail and the Red Death weren’t mentioned by the chroniclers or recorded in the artworks – the Conqueror hadn’t allowed it.  Maybe that was even the reason in the _real_ world.  Who would be able to tell after a thousand years?  All historians had to go on was the word of their predecessors, and medieval writers were notorious for ‘improving’ their stories or leaving out the parts that didn’t contribute to the axe they wanted to grind.

            So when he’d found the Grail on Flotta, William would have moved it.  He would want to have it someplace where he could keep an eye on it, but nobody else could ever get at it or stumble across it by accident – so he’d built something to protect it.  Something that, at least in his time, could never be dug up or knocked down.  Something he would have an excuse for setting his best soldiers to guard, without having to tell them what they were really protecting.  A stronghold so secure, his descendants would use it as mint, palace, prison, and treasure house, because it was impossible to break into or out of.

            The Grail was under the Tower of London.

            As a theory, it made internal sense, but Nat wasn’t sure how well it meshed with the outside world, or exactly what parts of it counted as truth or fantasy.  Was it her lie about knowing the answer that had come true, thus placing information in her brain about something that was already real?  Or was the theory a lie she was telling _herself_ , which had then come true when she _believed_ it would come true?  Would somebody searching a month ago have found anything odd in the Tower grounds, or had this whole thing sprung to life as part of Pierce’s animation of the statues?  As with the problem of O’Herlihy, the only way to find out was to go and see.

            Part of Natasha hoped they arrived and found nothing at all.  Maybe the Holy Grail didn’t exist and never had.  That would mean this had all been a colossal waste of time, but at least the world would still operate by rules Natasha understood.


	14. How to Get Rid of Fairies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for not updating last week. I've been very busy lately, but don't worry, I have no intention of abandoning this story!

            Natasha had thought Inverness had been crammed to overflowing with tourists the last time they’d passed through, but that was nothing compared to what it looked like now.  Scientists, media, and interested laypeople from all over the world had converged on the city, waiting for the monster to rear its head.  There was not a hotel room, parking spot, or restaurant table to be had for miles around, and the bridges over the River Ness were lined on both sides with people holding binoculars, while more camped out on the embankments.  There had to be _some_ kind of law about harassing endangered species that could be brought into play here, Nat thought.

            Things were fortunately quieter in the suburbs, where the police station was.  The storage room where Zola and broken in and Lipscomb had been killed was still roped off with yellow tape, but the rest of the force was beginning to get back into their routing.  Sharon headed inside like nothing was wrong, and asked for the chief.

            They’d had a brief look at Chief Fraser on their last visit to the station.  He was an overweight, fifty-ish fellow with a bushy red and gray mustache, and he arrived panting for breath, having run from wherever he’d just been.

            “Carter!” he exclaimed.  “I was just wondering what the devil had happened to you!  Where have you been?”

            “Flotta,” Sharon replied.  “I was…”

            “ _Flotta_?  What, with the giant on fire and the Ebola?”  Fraser went white and took a step back from her, as if afraid she might be contagious.  “I thought you were working on the Pierce case!”

            “I _am_ working on the Pierce case,” said Sharon.  “I’ve learned a lot, actually.”

            “Such as what?” asked Fraser.

            “Alexander Pierce is dead,” Sharon told him calmly.  “He was murdered by a German named Johann Totenkopf, who threw him out of a helicopter.  It’s going to be a hell of a report when I get around to writing it.  Before I do that, though, I have to find the next guy on Totenkopf’s hit list, and I’m pretty sure that’s Darren O’Herlihy.”

            “You mean Mick’s little brother?” Fraser said.

            “Yes!” Sharon exclaimed, clearly delighted that her theory was correct.  “ _Please_ tell me you’ve got him in protective custody!”

            Nat glanced around the room, worried.  Was it a good idea to just say it out loud?  Zola could be here right now, listening to every word.  He could have been with them all the way from Gill’s Bay, hiding in the boot of their car or something.  There was no sign of him, but how could they tell for sure?

            “He asked for protection,” the Chief said.  “He said he’d gotten threats from the guy who killed his brother.  We put him in a hotel in…”

            “Ah!  Ah!”  Sharon clapped her hands over her superior’s mouth.  “Don’t say it!  Don’t _tell_ us anything, okay?  Take us to him, but _don’t_ say the name of the place.  Walls have ears.”

            Chief Fraser stared at her a moment, then reached up and gently peeled her hands away from his mouth.  “What’s going on?” he asked.

            “It’s… let’s just say it’s a conspiracy,” Sharon decided.

            “What kind of conspiracy?  Are we talking about a three-blokes-get-together-to-murder-the-fourth type of conspiracy?  Or a the-queen-is-a-lizard-alien type of conspiracy?”

            “I’ll tell you all about it when the case is closed,” Sharon promised.  “Right now you’ll just have to trust me, it’s really important not to _talk_ about it.”

            The Chief nodded slowly, and pointed a finger at the people Sharon had with her.  “Who are they?”

            Sharon glanced back at her companions.  “Experts,” she said.

            “Experts,” Fraser echoed.

            “Yes,” said Sharon firmly.  “Dr. Jones is the archaeologist Mr. Pierce had consulted about his statues, and one of the last people to see him alive.  Steve is an authority on the folklore they were based on.  Dr. Wilson is helping me look into the, uh, Ebola thing, and Mr. Jones here is…” she spent a moment trying to figure out what Allen’s role might be, then gave up.  “He’s Dr. Jones’ father.  We need to talk to O’Herlihy,” she said.  “At least, eighty percent of us need to talk to O’Herlihy.”

            “All right.”  The Chief nodded.  “I trust you, Carter.”

            “Thanks,” said Sharon.  “That means a lot, Chief.”

            He sighed.  “Lord knows, nobody _else_ has any idea what’s going on.” 

* * *

 

            The police had put Darren O’Herlihy up at the Mercure Inverness Hotel, which Nat thought was an awfully nice place to be in protective custody.  It had five-star dining, a pool, and free wi-fi – the last time Nat had been locked up ‘for her own good’, it had been in a cell in Siberia with only one tiny space heater for her and four other girls.  O’Herlihy wasn’t enjoying any of these luxuries, though.  He was in his suite with the door locked and the curtains drawn, while two policemen stood guard in the hall and a third smoked on the balcony.  There was a very unseasonable ivy Christmas wreath hanging on the door.

            Sharon showed the other cops her badge, then knocked on the door.  “Mr. O’Herlihy!  I’m Detective Inspector Sharon Carter!” she called out.  “I’m looking into your brother’s death.  May I come in?”

            There was the sound of furniture being moved and a latch being turned, and then the door opened as far as the chain lock would let it.  One terrified blue eye, bloodshot from lack of sleep, peeked out.

            “Hi.”  Sharon tried to smile warmly.

            “You were in the helicopter,” said O’Herlihy.

            Natasha was surprised he remembered.  He must have been _very_ angry with them for stealing the spotlight.

            “Yes, that’s right,” Sharon said.  “It’s been a busy week, hasn’t it?  I just need to ask you some questions.”

            Nat pulled the two pendants out of her purse again and held them where O’Herlihy could see them.  Was it her imagination, or had the iron parts rusted a little since she saw them last?  She wished she’d taken a photograph.  “Your brother gave you one of these, right?” she asked.

            The door slammed shut.

            Sharon gently pushed Nat’s hand down, then knocked again.  “Mr. O’Herlihy, this is important!” she said.  “We need to know anything you can tell us about those pendants.”

            The door opened again and O’Herlihy’s hand came out, dangling another cross-shaped token on a broken silver chain.  This one was rusted quite badly, as if it had been sitting out in the weather for weeks.

            “Take it,” he said.  “I don’t want it anymore.”

            Nat reached to do so, but Sharon stopped her again.  “Where did Michael get that pendant, Mr. O’Herlihy?  He had more, right?  What did he do with them?”

            “Just take it,” O’Herlihy pleaded.  “I think it’s cursed.  It gave me a zap a while back, and since then I lost my monster, my brother was murdered, and some little goblin went through my stuff!  It’s half the reason I’m hiding in here.  Please, take it away.”

            Sharon gently took the pendant from his fingers, then caught his wrist to keep him from closing the door again.  “Can you tell us about the goblin?” she asked.

            O’Herlihy didn’t answer at first, and with Sharon in the way, Natasha couldn’t see his face.  She wondered what would have been there if she could have.

            “If I tell you, will you take it away?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Sharon promised.  “I’ll lock it away where you’ll never have to see it again.”

            The man took a deep breath.  He did not open the door any further, but began talking very quickly, as if to spit out everything he had to say before he could change his mind about saying it.

            “Mick rang me the night before… the night before they killed him,” he explained.  “He said there’d been this critter watching him, like a little old man the size of a child.  It woke him up in the middle of the night to ask him what he’d done with the charms.  I figured he dreamed it.  I didn’t notice after that I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days because I was busy with my monster, but when I came back to town to get more gear, I found my flat all torn apart, and there’s this little man, just like Mick described him.  He disappeared right in front of me, and an hour later the cops showed up and told me Mick’s blood is all over the floor in some warehouse.  Whatever those charms are, I figure they’ve gotta belong to the Little People.  That’s why I put the ivy on the door.  Grammy always said it kept the fairies out.”

            Nat glanced at the wreath.  She’d been wondering why it was there, and now that she knew… maybe that wasn’t a terrible idea.  They were dealing with creatures from folklore.  Maybe folklore could tell them how to fight back.  For starters, they’d probably have better luck if they didn’t use _plastic_ ivy.

            “Did the creature ask you about the pendants?” asked Sharon.

            “It ripped that one off my neck,” O’Herlihy said.  “Then it threw it away and said it was spent, and vanished.  There were a bunch of them originally but I don’t know what Mick did with them.  He probably sold them online, but I don’t have his eBay password, so I can’t check.”

            “What was his username?” asked Nat.  If she knew that, she could get into his account easily, password or no.

            O’Herlihy didn’t answer.

            “Did you know it?” Sharon asked.

            “Yeah.”  O’Herlihy wriggled his wrist out of her grip, looking embarrassed.  “It was Stud-Mick-Muffin,” he said, and shut the door again.

            Nat kept her face carefully straight as she turned to the others.  Allen was biting his lip, and Sam was clearing his throat, knowing that the situation was too serious to allow himself to snicker.  “All right,” she said.  “I’m gonna need some equipment, but I can get the names of the buyers.  There’s somewhere else I want to go first, though.” 

* * *

 

            Nobody asked her where it was she wanted to go, because all were conscious of the fact that Zola could be anywhere.  They just went along for he ride as she drove up and down High Street, examining the shops and restaurants as they passed them by.  Fortunately, even in the twenty-first century, the help Nat was looking for was easy to find.  It was waiting for her in a narrow little shop wedged between a McDonald’s and a rent-to-own appliance place.

            The actual storefronts on Inverness’ High Street probably dated from the nineteenth century.  The sign above the windows of this one had once advertised a chemist’s, and the letters still showed a bit through the thin coat of new paint that spelled out the word _Apothecary_.  The windows were full of fake plants, colourful candles, crystals, cards, and spooky-looking leather-bound books, all of which Nat cynically assumed were probably made by underpaid factory workers in China.  Curtains of beads and colourful cloth provided a backdrop, and from the ceiling of the display hung coloured glass globes with stringlike structures inside them.  There was also a sign sellotaped to the glass, which noted in Comic Sans that the establishment’s fortune teller was not available this week, due to unforeseen circumstances.

            A bell jingled above the door as they went inside.  A set of iPod speakers on the counter was playing birdsong.

            There were two women working, both of them tall, pale-skinned, and freckled.  The white woman was wearing a flowing green dress with multiple strands of beads around her neck, and had flaming red hair with ribbons and beads braided into it.  The East Asian woman was dressed in distressed jeans and a t-shirt with the tarot card image of the High Priestess, with multiple piercings in her ears and tattoos up her arms.  She was the one who smiled and greeted the group with, “how can I help you today?”

            “We have kind of a weird problem,” Natasha replied.  She noted that the woman’s nametag called her _Awakening_ , which seemed unlikely.  “We’re looking for something to get rid of fairies.”

            “What kind of fairies?” Awakening asked.  “If it’s brownies you want to keep them, and elves you can make friends with if you try.  If it’s pixies or red caps you’ll want to…”

            “A kobold,” said Nat.

            The redhead – _her_ nametag said _Clover_ – spoke up.  “Kobolds can be useful,” she said.  “If you can trick them into making a contract with you, they’ll be bound to serve you until the terms are fulfilled.”

            “This one’s already made a contract with a guy who doesn’t like us,” said Sam.

            “He has been following us across the countryside, listening in on our conversations and interfering in all our plans,” Sir Stephen agreed.

            “Ah!”  Awakening brought her hands together and beamed.  “I know just the thing!”  She nodded to Clover, who reached into a cupboard under the counter and pulled out a tray of cast iron horseshoes.  “Put one of these up over any point of entry,” Awakening said.  “Doors, windows, heating vents, anything like that.  He won’t be able to pass under it.”

            Nat glanced over her shoulder and saw several similar shoes over the door and windows of the shop.  “What if we’re worried he’s already _in_ the room?” she asked.

            Clover reached down her cleavage and pulled out a little glass bottle she was wearing on a silk cord.

            “Iron filings,” said Awakening.  “Iron is toxic to all kinds of fairy folk.  Sprinkle some of these over his hiding place, and he’ll be forced to reveal himself.”

            “Will that also work if he’s in disguise as another person?” asked Sharon.

            “Absolutely,” Awakening assured her.

            “What if we’re not in a building?” asked Sam.  “We’ve been spending a lot of time on the road.”

            Clover tucked the bottle back between her breasts and opened a drawer, lifting out a tray to reveal wooden rings and bangles nestled in soft foam.  Some were plain, others carved with intricate knotwork or floral designs.

            “Boxwood,” Awakening said.  “Wear one of these, and he can’t physically touch you.”

            Nat picked up one of the horseshoes to look at it.  It had clearly never been worn by a horse, or even touched by a farrier – it had merely been made in a horseshoe-like shape, a little small for anything but a pony.  Did that count?  The two women looked completely confident in their recommendations.  “He can’t come through a door under this,” she said, “but can he still eavesdrop through it?”

            Clover got up on a stool to take a potted plant down off a shelf.

            “Ivy,” said Awakening.  “If you have a horseshoe above your window but the blinds are still open, he can see in.  Surround the window with ivy, and all he’ll see is a black hole.”

            They really did sound like they had this all figured out – but even though it had been Nat’s own idea to come here, something in her was insisting that this was ridiculous.  Horseshoes, ivy, boxwood, fairies?  That was superstitious nonsense!  There had to be some more… some more _realistic_ way to keep Zola out of their business.  Something that would come with an explanation of _why_ it worked instead of being the heirloom wisdom of somebody’s grandparents!

            What else were they supposed to do, though?  Zola was undeniably real, and so were his abilities to shapeshift and listen in unseen.  Clover and Awakening believed in the folklore enough to practice it themselves, using the horseshoes to keep similar supernatural creatures out of their shop.  The worst that could happen was that it wouldn’t work, and then at least they wouldn’t be any worse off than they already were.

            “We’ll take the lot,” Nat decided.  “Mastercard, please.”

            They left the store with a brown paper bag full of horseshoes individually wrapped in tissue paper, boxwood rings on their fingers or on chains around their necks, and with Sam and Allen each carrying a potted ivy plant.  They loaded their purchases into the car, and then everybody looked at Nat.

            “Where next?” asked Sharon.

            “Someplace we can use a computer,” said Nat.

            Only a couple of blocks away they found the Eastgate Shopping Centre, another very modern brick and glass edifice that seemed terribly out of place among the Victorian streets around it.  There was a place inside that sold refurbished computers, so Nat bought a used tablet, and they moved on to the public library.  There, she dropped their copy of _The Romance of Sir Stephen_ in the slot, then they signed out a study room and got to work.

            The room had one door, and a window that looked out on the Farraline Park roundabout.  The door did not lock, but Sharon wedged a chair under the handle.  Nat turned on her new tablet and logged in to the library network, while Sam and Sir Stephen propped horseshoes over the door and window and tucked one into the fan vent in the ceiling.  Sharon surrounded each of these apertures with ivy, and more ivy went in a circle around the table for good measure.  Then Sharon took a pinch of filings out of the jar they’d bought, and blew them off her hand into the air.

            Nothing happened.

            “Looks like we’re clean,” she said.

            “Good.”  Nat cracked her knuckles, then typed in the username: _Stud-Mick-Muffin_.  She made a mental note that if she never needed an eBay account, she should pick a login that she wouldn’t mind seeing on her tombstone.

            For a website that handled millions of pounds in transactions every day, the security was laughable.  Nat was into the account in under a minute, and scrolling through the associated sales.  Mick O’Herlihy had a long list of auctions, mostly small jewelry items and designer sunglasses, with a few jackets, bags, and watches here and there.  It made Nat wonder how much of Darren O’Herlihy’s search for the Loch Ness Monster had been funded by stolen goods.

            Far down the list, she found what she was looking for.  Three years ago, the account had sold nine objects advertised as ‘medieval charms’.  The pictures confirmed that these were the fragments they were looking for – small iron crosses, each with a single gold bead at the top.  With them was a list of shipping addresses.

            “There’s one in France,” she said, copying them down on a sheet of notebook paper.  “One in Nottinghamshire, one in Dubai… the other six are in the US and Canada.  That will slow them down, at least.”

            “Can’t they teleport?” asked Sam.

            “I think they only make it _look_ like they’re teleporting by becoming invisible and insubstantial,” Nat said, although a little warily.  It wasn’t something she wanted to bet on.  “If they could teleport, why would they need helicopters to go to Flotta?”

            “For the troops,” said Sam immediately.  “They probably can’t teleport _everybody_.”

            “Even if they can, that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be able to get to the buyers,” said Nat.  “Some of these people might have moved, or re-sold or given away the fragments.  According to the website, this account was last updated three weeks ago.”  That might mean the Red Death hadn’t been there yet, or it might just mean that HYDRA’s computer experts were good at covering their tracks.  “Just in case, I’m gonna nuke it.  Destroy all the data so nobody can get at it again.  It’s not like Mick O’Herlihy’s coming back for it.”

            Nat rolled up the sheet of paper she’d written the names on, and wrapped a stem of ivy around it.  Then she deleted the account and scrubbed the fragments of it from eBay’s servers, they cleaned up the study room, and for good measure they went out on the bridge, squirmed to the front of the crowd of monster-watchers, and threw the tablet into the River Ness.

            They returned to the car, not speaking.  Nobody wanted to let anything slip out in the open where Zola might hear, and it really wasn’t necessary to say anything, anyway.  Even if the Red Death _could_ teleport, it would make sense for him to go after the closest fragment buyer first.  They had no time to lose – their next destination would be Nottinghamshire.”

            They re-used their ivy, taping the vines around the windows of the car so Zola would not be able to see in.  Nat thought it looked rather festive.  Allen had not yet had a turn to drive and Nat figured he might as well feel useful, so she let him take the wheel.  She sat in the back with Sharon and Sir Stephen, and only once they were back on the road did they discuss their next step.

            “The buyer lives in a town called Barton-in-Fabis, just south of the city of Nottingham,” Nat explained.  “We can check in on him, but then we need to go to London.  That’s where I think the Grail is.  It’ll take us a day or so to get there, depending on how long we end up stopping in Barton, so we’ve got that long to figure out what we’re gonna _do_ with the Grail once we find it.”

            “If we can defeat the Red Death in combat, there will be no need,” Sir Stephen said.  “A dead man cannot wield any worldly power, no matter how great.”

            “It’s not just the Red Death anymore, though,” Sharon reminded him.

            “He had a couple of dozen guys with him on Flotta, and there are probably more hanging around somewhere,” Sam agreed.  “If they’re Nazis then any one of them is as bad as he is.  Once he’s dead they’ll put somebody else in charge and we’re right back at square one.”

            Natasha thought for a moment.  “If I’m right about where it is,” she said, “William the Conqueror put it there because he thought nobody could ever get it out again.  He couldn’t foresee how the world would change.”  It wouldn’t take much to bring down the White Tower nowadays.  Just a few sticks of dynamite.  “We have to find someplace even _more_ secure.  Somewhere it can never possibly be retrieved from.”

            “Isn’t there supposed to be a twelve-mile-deep hole in Russia somewhere?” Allen asked.  “You could drop it down that.”  His voice was cautious, wavering.  He _wanted_ to be helpful, and must have been reassured by the fact that Nat had liked his last idea, but he still felt lost and unwelcome here.

            “The Kola Superdeep Borehole.”  Nat nodded.  “It’s twelve kilometres, not miles, but that’s still a long way down.”

            “Bad idea,” said Sam from the front seat.  “There’s websites that say you can hear the screams from hell at the bottom of it.”

            “That’s…” Nat began, but then stopped herself.  Who was she to say anything was ridiculous in this world where they found themselves?  “They had to stick something down there to drill the hole in the first place,” she decided.  “If they can do that, they could at least theoretically pull something out of it.  Thanks, Allen,” she added, feeling he deserved to hear that.  It had been brave of him to speak up.  “But no good.”

            “There’s the Challenger Deep,” said Sharon.

            “People have been down there in the past.”  Nat shook her head.  “They can go back.”

            “Yeah, well, the same applies to the _moon_ ,” Sam pointed out.  “We’ve gotta set ‘good enough’ somewhere.”

            “People have been to the _moon_?” asked Sir Stephen.

            “Twelve of them,” said Sharon.  “All Americans, about fifty years ago.  It was boring, so they never went back.”

            “The moon isn’t boring.  It’s just really expensive,” said Natasha.  “We can’t send it to the moon anyway, that’s…”  She caught herself again.

            “Ridiculous?” Sam supplied.

            “Ridiculous,” Natasha agreed, and suddenly the word seemed very significant.  “This is _all_ ridiculous.  This is a ridiculous problem.  Maybe a ridiculous solution is exactly what we need.”

            “What kind of ridiculous solution?” Sharon asked, sounding worried now.

            “Well,” Nat said, “there’s a lot of old Soviet space hardware just sitting around in warehouses going rusty.  It wouldn’t be safe for humans to use, but we wouldn’t be putting any humans into it.  All it would have to do is hold the Grail and reach the Sun’s escape velocity, which is easy – _Voyager_ did that back in the 70’s.  Somebody could get it back from the moon, but not if we fling it right out of the solar system.”

            There was a long silence as everybody digested that.

            “People have been not just to the moon, but to other parts of the celestial spheres, then,” said Sir Stephen.

            “It’s complicated,” Natasha told him.

            Sharon frowned.  “Okay, just to make sure I understand you.  You think we should steal the Grail, sneak it into Russia, put it on a thirty-year-old rocket, and launch it into space.”

            “Kazakhstan, actually,” Nat corrected.  “That’s where the launch pad was.  I know it’s silly,” she added, “but this is all silly.  It would fit right in.”

            “That is brilliant,” said Sam.  Nat couldn’t tell if he was using the word in the British sense of ‘amazing’ or the American sense of ‘genius’, but it probably didn’t matter.  “I’m never going to be able to tell anybody about this, not because it’s a secret but because nobody would believe even the normally possible parts!  Which reminds me,” he added.  “Natalie, if you’re a Russian secret agent, _did_ the Russians ever go to the moon?  I’ve heard that they did and just never told anybody.”

            “If they had, they wouldn’t have kept it a secret,” Nat pointed out.  “They’d have probably cared a giant hammer and sickle into the Sea of Tranquility.”  She hoped that wouldn’t be next on the list of impossible things that were going to come true.


	15. The Man from Barton

            The village of Barton-in-Fabis didn’t look like much, just another of the thousands of tiny nowhere towns peppered across the British Isles, waiting for the nearest big city – in this case, Nottingham itself – to swallow them up.  It boasted a population of two hundred and sixty-six, living in a few dozen houses clustered around a twelfth-century church that had been extensively restored during the Victorian era.  Nat would have expected it to be a very quiet place, as such hamlets often were.  Most of the traffic on the nearby A453 would pass right by, hardly noticing the town at all.  As they approached the little church, however, they found a crowd gathered, including several police panda cars.

            “That looks bad,” Sam observed.

            The conclusion seemed obvious enough: the Red Death had already been here.  Somebody was dead, and the fragment of the Grail was gone.  Nat rounded the block, trying to get a better idea of what was happening.  St. George’s church didn’t have a car park, just an old cemetery full of mossy stones, where nobody would actually have been buried in centuries.  Instead, there were vehicles parked on both sides of Manor Road and Church Lane, and in front of the building itself somebody had set up a couple of tables where children were selling cookies and lemonade.

            “Maybe it’s just a picnic,” Allen ventured, but even he knew that wouldn’t explain the police cars.

            As they made their second pass, a woman with long brown hair in a ponytail climbed over the low stone wall that surrounded the graveyard, and waved to them.  “Hello!” she called out.

            Nat pulled over and rolled down the window.  “Hi,” she said.  “Can we help you?”

            The woman offered a flyer.  “Yes, you can,” she said.  “Have you seen my brother-in-law?”

            Nat took the page from her, and the other occupants of the car leaned over her shoulders for a look.  At the top was a photograph of a man just short of middle age, with short, dusty-brown hair, blue eyes, and a squarish face with a furrowed brow as he squinted in the sunshine, sitting on the front stoop with a dog.  Accompanying text identified him as Clinton Francis, age thirty-seven, army veteran and father of two.  He’d been missing since… Nat sighed as she realized it was a familiar date.

            “He vanished the day the Loch Ness Monster made the news,” she said, passing the flyer over her shoulder for the people in the back seat to look at.

            “That’s right,” the woman said, “so of course the media has been ignoring the whole thing.  It’s very frustrating and we’re trying to get a county-wide search going.  If you could spread the word wherever you’re headed, we’d be very grateful.”

            The poster had a number to ring if anyone saw Mr. Francis, but didn’t provide an address.  Nat pulled out her notes on the fragment sales, and untied the ivy so she could show it to the woman.  “Is this his address?”

            “Yes!” she said, startled.  “How did you know.”

            “We’re looking into some stolen properly sold on eBay,” Nat explained.  “He was one of the buyers.”  She wondered whether, if Francis had disappeared the same day the Monster turned up, did that mean all the fragments had been dormant until the day Zola or Pierce had activated them in order to bring Sir Stephen and the Red Death to life?  “I know this is a strange question, but did he… did he believe anything nobody else did?” Nat asked.

            “What do you mean?”  The woman frowned, worried.

            “I don’t know,” Nat admitted.  “Did he… have any weird conspiracy theories, or did he think… this is a facetious example, but was he one of those people who think they’ve been abducted by aliens or something?” she tried.  It was hard to come up with a way of expressing what she wanted to know without sounding slightly crazy.

            The woman thought for a moment.  “I think you need to talk to my sister,” she said.

            She told them her name was Audrey Langlands, and let them park in her front drive before leading them back across the street to the church.  There her sister, Laura, was presiding over the effort to raise awareness of the missing Mr. Francis.  Laura was a few years older than Audrey, and wearing an empire-waisted blouse that hung over her belly in such a way as to suggest she was four or five months pregnant.  She was handing out bundles of flyers and assigning areas of the county where they should be put up.  The yellow dog from the photo of her husband was sitting next to her, occasionally nosing at her as if in concern.

            “Laura!” Audrey called out.  Mrs. Francis looked up, and Nat could see hope light up in her eyes at the sight of this group of strangers.  When she spoke, however, her voice was cautious.  She knew that after several days she was more likely to hear bad news than good.

            “Have they seen him?” she asked.

            “Not exactly,” Audrey said.  “This is Natalie, from Dundee, and her, uh, friends.  Apparently some of Clint’s medieval collection was stolen, and they think that might have something to do with why he disappeared.”

            “Oh.”  Laura wilted a little.  She now definitely expected the worst.

            “We don’t have any reason to think he’s dead,” Sharon said quickly, which Nat suspected was a stock police response to the wife of a missing husband.  She showed her badge.  “I’m DI Carter.  Your sister suggested that Clinton had some personal problems, and I hoped you might let us ask you a few questions about them.”

            Laura nodded sadly and offered her stack of fliers to her sister.  “Can you take over this?” she asked.

            “Of course,” Audrey said.  “Go talk in the church.  It’s quieter in there.”

            Saint George’s seemed small from the outside, but the inside had high ceilings and big windows to let plenty of sunlight in, and the bare stone walls and wooden pews suggested sincere rustic piety without the need for all the window dressing of a place like Westminster Abbey.  There was a little side chapel off on the right, and the space behind the altar was closed off with a medieval-looking wrought iron gate.  A priest had been doing something in this area, but he nodded to Mrs. Francis and went into the chapel to provide her and her guests with some privacy.

            Laura sat down in one of the pews, and waited while Nat and the others arranged themselves around her.  Sharon sat next to her, ready to offer a hand or a Kleenex if necessary.

            “Clint wasn’t well,” Laura explained in a hushed voice.  The church might be small, but the bare walls meant that even whispers echoed.  “He served in Afghanistan, and he had an accident with his artillery.  He wasn’t seriously hurt, but he lost most of his hearing and he was discharged and sent home.”

            Sharon nodded seriously.  “How did he cope with that?” she asked, putting a hand over one of Laura’s to reassure her.

            “Not very well,” Laura admitted.  “He got a job playing Robin Hood for tourists up at Sherwood Forest and that seemed to make him happy, but at the end of the day he’d come home and get drunk and didn’t want to talk to me or play with the kids.  I’ve been worried to death about him and then that day he just didn’t come home from work.  I drove up there and they said he arrived okay but nobody saw him after about eleven o’clock in the morning.  The parks people don’t want to hand out fliers for us because they’re worried some little child will find Robin Hood dead in the woods.”  Her voice told of disgust with them, mixed with near-despair.  “I’m scared he got in an accident, or even did something on purpose.”

            Nat’s sinking feeling got even worse.  “Did he seem to believe that Robin Hood really did still live in Sherwood forest?” she asked.

            “Sometimes I think he believed he really _was_ Robin Hood,” Laura whimpered.  “I think he liked that better than being Clint Francis.”

            A beautiful lie, Nat thought.  This poor man was suffering from his injury, from adjusting to life with a disability and probably from PTSD, and he’d seized on Robin Hood as an alter ego who didn’t have those problems.  She caught Sharon’s eye, and got a nod.  Something terrible had happened to this guy.

            “One more question,” said Sharon.  “Audrey mentioned your husband’s ‘medieval collection’.  We came here because we believe he bought one of these amulets… Nat, do you still have those?”

            “Right here.”  Natasha pulled them out.

            Laura wiped her eyes on her sleeve and took a look.  “Yes, just like that,” she said, “with the gold bead on the top, only his wasn’t all rusted.  He started buying medieval-themed stuff a few months ago, after he got the job in Sherwood.  I thought it was nice he had a new hobby.”  She sounded like she was kicking herself for not seeing the warning signs, at the same time as she still wasn’t sure what those signs had actually _been_.  “He was doing a lot of reading on it, too… he talked about writing a book.  He said the _Ivanhoe_ version wasn’t realistic and the _real_ Robin Hood would have been completely different.”

            “Do you know where that pendant is now?” asked Sharon.

            “I hadn’t thought about it.  I’ll look for it when I get home tonight,” Laura promised.

            “Please do,” Sharon said, and held out a business card.  “Here’s my mobile number, to ring if you find it – or if you don’t find it.  Give me your number, too, and I’ll keep you updated.”

            Laura nodded and accepted the card.  “You said you don’t have any reason to think he’s dead.  Is there any reason to think he’s okay?”

            “Of course there is,” Sharon said.

            “I read that if somebody’s missing more than three days, the police are expecting to find them dead,” Laura said.

            “That’s children,” Sharon told her quickly – a little _too_ quickly, Nat thought, but then, Nat knew it was a lie.  The odds of finding _anybody_ more than seventy-two hours after they’d disappeared were slim indeed.  They were either dead, or they didn’t want to be found.  “Adults who can look after themselves are a different story.”

            “Remind him… remind him he promised to finish building a new chicken coop,” Laura said softly.  “He’s always got something he’s building or something he’s fixing.  When he went away to Afghanistan he told me I could count on him to come back, because he needed to finish them all.”  She was desperately hoping that the same would be true now, and that a reminder of his promise would be enough to bring him home.

            Laura had to sit in the church for a few more minutes and compose herself.  Then she offered to make them all a cup of tea, which they politely turned down, saying they’d better be off if they wanted to reach the park while it was still open.  The five of them piled back into their rented car as if they couldn’t get out of Barton-in-Fabis fast enough, and as they turned north again to head for Sherwood Forest, there was no more joking about Russian moon missions.

            “Do you think he summoned up Robin Hood like they summoned up Sir Steve?” Sam asked.  “Or do you think, like she said, he _is_ Robin Hood?”

            “I have no idea,” sighed Natasha.  “I mean, who _knows_ what’s possible anymore?”  It depended, too, on who it was who believed the lie.  Mr. Francis himself?  One of the children he entertained at the park?  Would either possibility make for a different version of Robin Hood?  Or did even _asking_ represent another attempt to apply logic to a situation it had no bearing on?

            “Who is Robin Hood?” asked Sir Stephen.

            By now Nat knew better than to be surprised.  “Interesting question,” she said.

            “He’s kind of a mythical figure,” said Sam.  “Like you, but with more myth.”

            “He doesn’t really have a single discrete identity,” Natasha agreed, and was a little ashamed to realize that _she_ didn’t know the character very well, either.  She’d seen movies and television shows that portrayed Robin Hood or referenced him, but she had never actually read any of the ballads, and the story varied so widely from interpretation to interpretation that she wasn’t sure what the core narrative actually was.

            She therefore stuck to the historical context.  “Robin Hood is a character from folklore who later made his way into poetry.  Like Sam said, kind of like you, although I don’t think he’s ever been called a saint and nobody’s made a movie about Sir Stephen of Rogsey.”  That seemed a curious oversight.  The story, at least the way Sir Stephen himself told it, was terribly cinematic.  “Supposedly he was active in the 1190’s, during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart.  He was a poacher and highwayman, and to avoid capture he lived in Sherwood Forest with his followers, who were called the Merry Men.  They’re said to have robbed from the rich and given to the poor, and some versions say that Robin Hood himself was a nobleman until Prince John seized his lands.”

            “Mrs. Francis said her husband thought that was unrealistic,” Sharon recalled.  “I wonder who _he_ thought Robin Hood was.”  For their purposes, that was probably what mattered.

            “The story usually ends with King Richard pardoning him for his crimes and Robin Hood marrying a woman named Marian, who was a relative of the king’s,” Nat went on.  “I don’t know the sources well, though.”  She probably should have.  It _was_ part of the period she worked on, but there was no archaeological evidence of Robin Hood, and he’d always seemed to Nat to be just a bit of romantic silliness.  She would have to correct that.

            They passed through the city of Nottingham, where they made a bit of a detour so they could drive by the castle and look at the bronze statue of Robin Hood that stood outside it.  It showed him preparing to fire an arrow, wearing his traditional costume of feathered cap, tunic, and hose.  Nat observed to herself as they passed that if they found the missing Mr. Francis running around the woods dressed like _that_ , it would be difficult not to laugh at him.

            Long ago, Sherwood Forest had covered half of Nottinghamshire, but over the centuries it had shrunk to a few acres of birches and oaks in a nature preserve, with a visitor’s centre that put on medieval-themed shows for the tourists.  Unlike the church in Barton it _did_ have a car park, though on this particularly day it was only half-full – the sky was heavily overcast, and people didn’t want to be outside.  There was a playground for the children, shops full of cheesy souvenirs, and a fenced-off fairground set aside for the park’s annual Robin Hood Festival.  It seemed absurd to think anyone could disappear in such a well-frequented place.

            If Francis had met the fate they feared, though, this was where he would be, so they paid their admission and headed in.  Their first stop was the Major Oak, an enormous old tree so thick and top-heavy that since the nineteenth century its huge branches had been held up by scaffolding.  Local lore said that this was the very tree where Robin Hood had lived during his time as an outlaw, and it was probably where Francis had spent most of his day as park mascot.  He obviously wasn’t there now, though.  The tree was far too precarious to climb, and if he’d been out in the open swinging through the trees on a vine and robbing people at arrowpoint, he wouldn’t be the _missing_ Mr. Francis – he’d be Mr. Francis in the nearest psychiatric hospital.

            “Swinging on a vine is Tarzan,” said Sam, when Nat brought this up.

            “I know,” she said.  “I just can’t think of anything else a guy would do hanging out in the woods.”

            Sharon put her hands on her hips and looked around at the tourists snapping pictures.  “What we should do is get somebody in here with some K-9 units,” she decided.  “We’d have to go back to Barton and get something with his scent on it, but they’d track him down in no time.  Or we could go get that dog Mrs. Francis had.  Dogs are usually good at finding their owners.”

            “Dogs make too much noise,” said Natasha.  “The last thing you want to do when hunting a fugitive is warn him you’re coming.”

            “Is he a fugitive?” asked Allen.

            “I bet he thinks he is,” said Nat.  “He probably thinks the Sheriff of Nottingham is trying to hunt him down for poaching and highway robbery.  They hanged people for that in the middle ages.  Didn’t they, Sir Steve?”

            “For that and less,” said Sir Stephen.

            “Anyway, I have a better idea,” said Nat.  “If he’s living rough out here he’ll need a campfire to keep warm at night and cook his food.”

            “We’re gonna find one little fire in a thousand acres of forest?” asked Sharon.

            “Sure,” said Sam.  “I think I know what she’s onto.  We’re gonna need some gear, aren’t we?”

            “Yes, we are,” said Nat.

            There were a dozen little towns within a short drive of Sherwood Forest.  Google found them the nearest electronics shop, and there they purchased a night-vision camera and a toy drone.  Being as this was _her_ plan, Nat was prepared to pay for it herself, but Sam stepped in.

            “I’ll get this,” he said, pulling out his own wallet.

            “Are you sure?” Natasha asked.

            “Yes, I’m sure,” he said with a grin.  “If I pay for it, I get to keep the stuff and play with it when we’re done!”

            “Oh, I get it – it’s a _boys and their toys_ thing.”  Nat smiled back.  “All right, they’re yours.”

            The drone already had a small camera in it.  Back at the car park in Sherwood Forest, Nat used the front bonnet of the car as a worktable to disassemble that and replace its optical CCD chip with the infra-red one from the game camera.  Then they loaded the software into Sam’s phone, and sent the drone on a test flight around the fairground.  The image showed up the heat of people and car engines quite nicely, and Sam got an opportunity to teach a few curious children about the electromagnetic spectrum.

            “We’ll be able to fly it at night,” he explained to them, “because the camera doesn’t need light to see.  It just needs things to be warm.  So if there are people or animals in the woods, we’ll be able to find them by their body heat.”

            The children nodded.  “Are you looking for Robin Hood?” one little girl asked.  “I heard he was dead.”  Word of Mr. Francis’ disappearance had evidently travelled further than his wife and sister-in-law believed.

            “Uh, I’m sure Robin Hood’s just fine,” said Sam.  “He’s probably just lying low or something.  Doesn’t want the Sheriff of Nottingham finding him, after all.”

            “Can your camera find dead things?” a boy asked, fascinated.

            “No.  Dead things go cold,” said Sam.

            “Dead things decompose,” said the girl, speaking with the profound confidence of a six-year-old who knows what _decompose_ means.  “Decomposing produces heat, like in Mum’s compost, so it _might_ still see him.”

            The girl’s embarrassed father put a hand on her shoulder.  “We should probably get back to the car, Sharaf,” he said, giving Sam an apologetic smile.  “Mum’s waiting.”

            Sunset was earlier in Nottingham than it had been six degrees further north on Flotta, but it was still a long wait.  The park closed and most of the cars cleared out, so Nat and the others snuck back into the picnic area and lit a little campfire of their own to toast some marshmallows while they waited for the stars to come out.

            “You know,” said Sam, watching the sparks from the fire drift up into the evening sky, “when I first read that story I mentioned, about Sir Sigurd who could talk to birds, I thought that would be a really great superpower to have.”

            “You feared somebody was plotting against you?” asked Sir Stephen.  The old saga told that the birds had warned Sigurd his foster father was going to murder him.

            Sam shook his head.  “No, it was more for stuff like this.  Birds can fly, so if you need to find a guy, you could ask the birds to be on the lookout for him, and they can cover way more ground than you and report back.  Or if _you’re_ the one who’s lost in the woods, you can ask a bird and it’ll take a look at the countryside and tell you where the nearest town is.  If you’re hungry, a hawk can catch you dinner, and other birds can tell you what berries are poisonous.  If you’re in the dark you can have an owl on the lookout because they can see at night.  That sort of thing.”

            “So when you were a kid, you thought you were going to go live in the woods?” asked Sharon, amused.

            “I figured it was part of going on quests,” said Sam.  “Then the kids at school told me that talking to birds was a thing Disney Princesses did, so I kind of lost my enthusiasm for it.”

            Sharon chuckled  “Another child’s dream destroyed by gender expectations!” she said.

            “Drones are much more manly,” said Nat.  “And they don’t shit on your car.”

            “True, but this one only flies for about fifteen minutes at a time,” Sharon said.  She picked up the package of spare batteries they’d bought and counted them.  “We’ll have to do quick peeks.  I figure we can send it straight up for a wide view, then bring it straight back down again and move on.  That way our own body heat will show up in the centre of the image, and we can use that to orient ourselves.  Why didn’t anybody at the station ever think of this?” she wondered.

            “I’m guessing nobody would budget the police money to play with drones,” said Sam.  “Now _there’s_ something to destroy your dreams.”

            Sir Stephen had been very quiet for the past day or so.  Maybe he felt like he was out of his depth if they weren’t in combat, or maybe he’d been humbled by his encounter with the weapons of the future, or even by the colossus.  Maybe he was just taking it all in.  He _was_ paying attention to their conversations, and occasionally had something to add, but Nat did wonder what he was thinking.

            Now, while everybody else talked, he picked up the drone as if it were an injured bird or a glass sculpture, something he worried might shatter in his hands, and examined it reverently.  “I’ve heard tales of sorcerers who could fly by making wings for themselves with feathers and string, or transform themselves outright into birds,” he said.  “I used to hope I would someday see one, but I never did, and I think now they may have been naught but stories… though if I too am naught but a story, perhaps I may yet!  But in the future men _have_ learned to fly, and it’s by spinning a wing rather than flapping it.”

            “History shows that humans don’t do well with flapping wings,” said Nat.

            “Airplane wings don’t flap, but they don’t spin, either.”  Sharon pointed up at the red and green lights that signified a plane flying over.  “There’s one.  Maybe you’ll get to travel in one of those someday,” she suggested to Sir Stephen.

            That was a bit of a strange thought.  When this was all over – assuming it ever did end, which Natasha was not entirely sure of anymore – she would probably go back to her job at Dundee, Sam would find another hospital to work at, and Sharon would continue with the cops in Inverness.  What would happen to Allen and Sir Stephen?

            Allen Jones could get a job, of course.  He wasn’t technically a real person, but neither was _Natalie_ Jones, and she got along just fine.  Nat could fudge him up some records in the same way she’d done for herself, and he could go live a quiet, normal life in New York or wherever he wanted.  The life he remembered wasn’t real, but the skills he recalled from it would be.

            Sir Stephen presented a problem on an entirely different level, in that he had real skills, but they were not _relevant_.  He knew how to ride a horse and fight with a sword, but had no idea how to drive a car or use a computer.  He’d said he could read and they’d seen him count, but only on a very basic level.  The kind of literacy and arithmetic that were necessary for day-to-day life in the twenty-first century were probably far beyond him.

            “Sir Stephen?” she asked.

            “Yes, Natalie?”  He handed the drone carefully back over to Sam.

            “Do you have any idea what you’ll do when this is finished?” Nat wanted to know.  That was assuming he stuck around, of course.  The idea of him simply vanishing into the ether was still a possibility.  “When the quest is over?”

            “I do not like to think so far ahead,” he replied.  “As I said, this is the task the Lady of the Lake chose me for.  I shall decide what comes next when I complete it, and not before.”

            As she glanced around the circle, Nat could see the others realizing one by one what she just had, and they began to suggest other possibilities.

            “Ultimate Beastmaster?” Sam offered with a snicker.

            “Art!” said Sharon.  “They’re always looking for people to help restore old parchments and cathedrals, and you’ve got the perfect background and training.”

            “Football,” said Allen.  “American _or_ European, it wouldn’t matter.  You’d just have to lear the rules and then you’d be unstoppable.”

            “I don’t think they’d let him be an athlete,” Nat said.  “He’s got an unfair advantage.”

            “Pretty sure getting dunked by the Lady of the Lake doesn’t count as doping,” said Sam.

            “Only because nobody’s ever done it before,” said Nat.  “Once they got a look at him, they’d make a rule.”

            “What did _you_ want to do?” Allen asked Sir Stephen.  “You said you weren’t planning anything, but _if_ you could have done whatever you wanted once the fighting was over, what would it have been?”

            “I never thought of the fighting as having an end,” said Sir Stephen, with a smile at their naivete – the Middle Ages had been a time of constant conflict, to the point where the church had made rules about which days were too holy to battle on.  “I would have hoped to continue to serve my king in whatever way he required of me, and…” he paused.  “And that the Lady Margaret might have me for a husband, despite my low birth.  Perhaps our children would have played with Buckeye’s, if he married someday.  Had I the money, too, I would have liked to build a chapel at Rogsey Abbey in my mother’s name, for she deserved such a memory.”  Sir Stephen sighed.  “I haven’t dreamed of such things in a long time.  It no longer seemed to matter anymore, after Buckeye fell.”

            Sam had apparently heard that part of the story, probably when Sir Stephen had stayed at his flat overnight.  Natasha and Sharon, however, had not, nor had Allen.

            “What happened to him?” Nat asked.


	16. Robin of Sherwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I apologize for not posting a chapter last week. I've been very busy at work, and also planning for a trip that will take me away from my computer for the next two weeks. Don't worry, I'll be back and keep posting this story, and I'm working on a sequel.

            Sir Stephen did not immediately reply to Natasha’s question, and she figured he probably didn’t want to talk about it.  “Sorry,” she said.  “I know it must be…”

            “No, no,” Sir Stephen said.  “it is as much a part of the tale as any other.  Perhaps, indeed, the most important part.”

            He sat silent for a few moments longer.  They’d surrounded their campfire with a ring of twisted ivy stems, made from the last scraps of the two plants they’d bought in Inverness.  They would have to find more before they tried to have any more private conversations.  As the sky darkened, the world seemed to shrink to the width of the bubble of firelight, which just about reached the ivy border.  They could hear the traffic on Swinecote Road, but that was far away.  The only nearby sound was the occasional crackle and snap of the burning wood.

            Sir Stephen’s marshmallow caught fire.  He blew it out and pulled it off the stick to stuff into his mouth, burned layer and all.  Once he’d chewed that and swallowed it, he finally began to speak.

            “We caught up with the Red Death high in the snowy mountains,” he said distantly, watching the sparks drift up.  “I cannot say which mountains exactly – by this point we had wandered further from my home than I had ever dreamed of going.  There, we met him and his followers in battle.  It was small as skirmishes went, only a dozen men to a side, and yet I do not think any war in history was ever fought with such tireless determination.  Our hearts were weary and our fingers stiff, and yet we battled on, knowing how great was the burden on our shoulders.”

            When Sir Stephen had been telling stories in the car, the rest of the group had involved themselves in the conversation, asking questions and making comments.  Now they listened quietly, chewing on sticky mouthfuls of marshmallows and chocolate.  Maybe it was just that Sir Stephen’s voice seemed softer out here in the open air.

            “I was locked in a duel with a giant among the Normans,” Sir Stephen went on, “a brute some seven feet tall, who spoke no English but bellowed abuse in French.  He called my mother a whore, and though I knew it was naught but a common insult uttered in ignorance, it made me so angry I could barely see.  My rage was my undoing, though, for in the throes of it I dropped my shield, and the giant got the better of me and threw me over the cliff.  In the nick of time I managed to catch hold of the rocks, but the side of the mountain was slick with ice, and I could not climb back up.  Buckeye, however, took up my fallen shield, and with that and his own sword he cut down the Red Death’s men like corn in a field.”

            Sir Stephen began to smile as he remembered the scene, proud of his friend’s courage and ferocity.  “He attacked the Norman giant and slit him open like a fish, from navel to neck, then found himself face-to-face with the Red Death himself.  The Red Death had taken the map gem and mounted it in a ring, which he wore now on the middle finger of his left hand.  Buckeye broke his opponent’s shield with a blow from mine, and then cut the Red Death’s arm off just above the elbow.  It would have fallen into the crevasse over which I dangled and been lost forever, and the map with it, but with one hand still clinging to the icy stones I caught it and held it, still warm.”

            Sir Stephen stuffed another marshmallow in his mouth, this one right out of the package, and chewed it slowly.  Everybody else waited, anxious to hear what had happened next.

            “Sir Gabriel, the Moor of Many Tongues, came to pull me up again,” Sir Stephen said.  “I think he and I both believed that the Red Death would bleed out and die there, and we would be free to find the Grail and present it to king Harold.  But though he was missing his shield arm, the Red Death still held his sword, and as Buckeye stepped away to help Sir Gabriel with me, the Red Death cut _his_ arm off in turn.  I heard Buckeye scream out in pain, and I saw the blood spatter on the snow.  The Red Death snatched up the fallen limb, leaving my shield on the ground, and called out for Zola.  With the imp at his side, he vanished.

            “At the moment I cared not where they had gone or why,” Sir Stephen admitted.  “I thrust the Red Death’s severed arm into Sir Gabriel’s hands and ran to see to Buckeye.  Alas, I was not quick enough.  As I reached for him, his legs gave way, and he slid over the cliff.  I caught his cloak, but his brooch pin broke, and the last thing I saw was the terror and pain on his face as he vanished into the swirling snow.”  Sir Stephen swallowed, and lowered his head.  “I see it still.”

            Nobody spoke.  Nat in particular concentrated on making herself another s’more, and tried not to catch anybody’s eye.  There’d been people like that for her, too – people she’d tried to save, and couldn’t.  The nameless thug on Flotta was only the most recent, and she, too, would never stop seeing their faces.

            Sir James Buckeye had not been a real person, and the scene Sir Stephen described had never happened.  It couldn’t have – it was too _theatrical_ , too much of a fantasy.  Real history was much more about fat old men shouting at each other than sworn foes battling it out in secret on a snowy cliff.  Yet the image was a terribly compelling one, and to Sir Stephen, who remembered it as something that had happened to him personally, it was of course the most real thing in the world.

            That was the truly horrifying thing about Sir Stephen, or about Allen Jones, who was crunching thoughtfully on a graham cracker while stirring the fire with a long stick, or about Robin Hood if that were who they were here to find.  They had memories that had never happened.  They loved people who didn’t exist.  Buckeye’s death was as real to Sir Stephen as the smear of chocolate beside his mouth, or the smell of the wood smoke.  The same was true of Jones’ little red-haired daughter building snowmen in the back yard.  Natasha suspected that some of her own memories were false, but the overall outline of her life as she recalled it was probably correct, and the last few years since she’d escaped and become Natalie Jones definitely so.  Allen and Sir Stephen didn’t even have _that_ for comfort.  Their reality was only a few days old.

            “When _we_ saw the Red Death, he had two arms,” Sharon observed.  “Is that just because Apple made the statue with two?  Or did he have some magic he could…” she paused, her eyes widening in horror as she figured it out.  “Oh.”

            Sir Stephen nodded.  “If you watch him carefully, you will see that his left arm is shorter than his right.  That is Buckeye’s arm, which by some awful magic he rooted to his own shoulder to replace the one cut from him.  When next I met the Red Death, I told him that if the last thing I ever do is to take it back, I shall die satisfied.”

            “That would be a thing,” said Sam, interested.  “I mean, not having to worry about tissue matching and blood types and infection.  Just stick it in and say a spell and presto!  You’ve got a new liver!”

            “It is not so simple,” Sir Stephen reminded him.  “Magic requires sacrifice.”

            “Oh, right.”  Sam sighed.  “Sorry, just us Muggles, wanting magical solutions as usual.”  He smiled half-heartedly, hoping the joke would cheer everybody up.

            At last they decided that the sky was dark enough and the park empty enough that the missing Mr. Francis would feel a fire was both necessary and safe.  After extinguishing their own fire and putting the rest of the marshmallows back in the car, they turned on the drone.  A set of LEDs that allowed the user to keep track of it during night flights flickered on, red and green, and they sent it up on its first reconnaissance mission.

            The first flight didn’t show much.  Their own cluster of bright, warm bodies stood out brightly, as did the glowing embers of their campfire a few yards away.  Among the trees, other heat sources were moving around – probably deer or other crepuscular animals.  Nothing looked hot enough to indicate a fire still burning, so they brought the drone back down and moved on to the Major Oak, figuring Robin Hood would choose a campsite close to something familiar.

            The second flight didn’t show anything useful, either.  Neither did the third.  They moved deeper into the woods and on their fifth flight, with the batteries getting worryingly low, they found what they were looking for.  On the north edge of the camera’s view was a bright blob, pulsing slightly and changing shape.

            Sam moved the drone closer for a bird’s eye view of this target.  The battery symbol was flashing urgently in the corner of the control app’s display as the others crowded around.

            “Is that a person there?” asked Sharon, pointing to an irregular bump on the edge of the bright place.

            “I don’t know if the camera could resolve that at this distance,” said Nat.  “Can we descend a little?”

            “We’re already descending,” said Sam.  “I think I’d better bring her home and change the batteries, and then we’ll take a second look.”

            That was when the drone suddenly spun out of control.  The image on the screen changed wildly as it fell, showing first the darkness of the sky and then the warmth of the campfire, and Nat looked up just in time to see the red LEDs vanish into the treeline.  A moment later, all they had left was a _no signal_ message from the app.

            Nobody had been expecting _that_.

            Sam selected a point a few seconds earlier in the footage they’d recorded.  The blob that could have been a person by the fire _might_ have made a sudden movement, but it could also have been the fire popping.  It was impossible to say.

            “I guess we’d better go see for ourselves,” Sam said.

            Nat nodded and turned to Allen – the only member of the group without even an approximation of combat training.  “Stay in the back,” she said.  “We don’t want you getting hurt.”

            He nodded unhappily.

            They began creeping through the woods, heading for the mysterious hotspot.  Everybody was on their guard.  Until now Nat, and probably the others too, had been thinking of this as a sort of side quest, an annoying task that had to be done before they could get back to the main thread of their adventure.  She certainly hadn’t considered it _dangerous_ , not compared to facing the Red Death and his magic.  Robin Hood wasn’t a threatening figure.  He was a forest elf or a friendly cartoon fox, and unlike the Red Death, he could be reasoned with.

            The loss of the drone had been a sharp reminder that any real incarnation of Robin Hood was not likely to be as nice as the ones in the movies, for the simple reason that he wouldn’t know whose sided they were on.  He was, after all, a criminal – a robber, a hunter, and a highly skilled archer.  There were five of them to one of him, but none of them were wearing any protection.  Sharon didn’t have her bulletproof vest on, and Sir Stephen’s coat of mail had been left behind on Flotta.  Even if they’d had those, it might not have done any good.  Arrows at close range would go through chainmail like tissue paper, and Kevlar probably wouldn’t fare much better.

            Up ahead, they began to see an orange glow.  Sherwood forest was open and grassy for the most part, birch and hazel and the occasional oak, with plenty of brush and twigs that could crunch underfoot if a person weren’t careful.  Nat had been taught how to walk in a forest, how to place her feet and shift her weight to make the minimum sound, but her companions weren’t so careful.  More than once she winced at somebody bumbling along behind her – but in between those sounds, oddly enough, she thought she could hear _laughter_.

            At first she thought she must be imagining it, but as they got closer the fire became visible, in the middle of a little clearing left by the fall of a large tree, and the laughing got louder and more distinct.  Nat motioned for the others to stay back, and crept ahead alone on all fours to see what was going on.

            There _was_ a campfire, neatly surrounded by a little circle of stones pulled from the banks of streams or the edges of paths.  Sam’s drone had been impaled on an arrow, and set up over the fire as if it were an animal to be roasted.  A man was sitting and looking at this, and laughing as if it were the funniest joke in the world.

            Nat came a little closer.  Moving firelight distorted faces, but she was pretty sure this was Mr. Francis – he had the right haircut, the right nose, the right jawline.  Where he’d been wearing a t-shirt and jeans in the flyer photograph, he was now dressed in a black tunic, grayish hose, leather shoes with pointed toes, and a very amateur straw hat, all topped off with a modern fake leather coat which, to judge by its cut, length, and grape-purple colour, had been made for a woman.  At some point this man had been eating two small birds he’d cooked over his fire, probably pigeons, but he was now distracted by his personal joke about roasting the drone.

            Around him was the remains of a six-pack of cheap supermarket beer, which went a long way towards explaining why he found it so funny.

            Nat straightened up slowly.  In the state this man was in, just standing up and saying hello seemed like a pretty good plan after all.  “Excuse me!” she called out.

            The man looked up and saw her, and before she had time to blink he was on his feet, with an arrow fitted to a longbow almost as tall as he was.  “Who’s there?” he demanded, no longer laughing.

            She stepped forward, hands up to show she was unarmed.  “Just me.”

            “Oh, well, _that’s_ a relief,” the man said, but he didn’t lower the bow.  He was drunk enough to sway slightly back and forth as he stood there, but his eyes remained locked on hers.  “Who the hell are you?”

            He had no idea what a question that was, Nat thought with a moment’s amusement.  Even _she_ sometimes wasn’t sure who she was.  “I’m Natalie,” she said, keeping her hands where he could see them.  “I’m not armed.  Are you Robin Hood?”  Now _there_ was a question she’d never thought she would ask.  There’d been a lot of those lately.

            “Yes,” said the man, “and at this distance an arrow will go right through you, Natalie, so you’d better tell me what you want.”

            Sir Stephen apparently wasn’t going to stand for that – he dashed in, his shield on his arm, and stepped between Nat and Robin.  “I am Sir Stephen of Rogsey!” he declared.  “And _you_ , Robin Hood, have no business threatening a lady who has offered no threat to _you_!”

            Robin’s eyes narrowed as he took in this new threat.  “If she knows who I am, then she knows I’m wanted for poaching.”  His voice was slurred but only slightly, as if he were a little better at making a _show_ of holding his liquor than he was at actually doing so.  “For all I know, the lady’s here to lure me into a trap.  And if _you’re_ a knight, what are you doing running around the woods in your underwear?”

            He didn’t talk the way Sir Stephen did, Natasha noticed.  Sir Stephen spoke like a character in a poem, with fancy grammar and an educated accent that was quite at odds with his claimed origins in rural Cornwall.  Robin spoke colloquial Nottinghamshire English and used modern turns of phrase.  He was the Robin Hood Clinton Francis had imagined himself to be, rather than one from an older retelling.

            “We’re not your enemies,” said Nat.  “We just want to talk to you.”

            “About what?  I’m not somebody friends drop in on for a pint,” said Robin.  “Who are the others?  There’s three more of you, right?”

            One by one, they stepped out and came forward, arms raised.  Sharon kept glancing down, aware that she might have to go for her gun at a moment’s notice and trying to calculate how much time she would have to do so.  Sam watched Robin, looking for any sort of opening to intervene.  Allen appeared with a crunch of twigs and leaves, hands on his head and face terrified.

            Robin looked worried now, perhaps wondering whether these loud people were a cover for somebody with more weapons and better sense.  His eyes flicked back and forth and his head tilted from left to right, listening.

            “You can hear,” Nat observed.

            “I’ve got the ears of a hawk!” Robin boasted, then paused and frowned as he realized that wasn’t quite right.  “You don’t last long in the woods without them,” he added, trying to save face.

            Mrs. Francis had said her husband became depressed following an injury and hearing loss.  He’d thought of himself as a version of Robin Hood who didn’t have that disability, and the Grail fragment had taken up this fantasy and restored his hearing at the expense of his identity.  For some reason, that was the most chilling thing Nat had encountered on this entire adventure, even worse than Pierce being thrown out of the helicopter or the Sea Dog bursting like a balloon.  Clint Francis had utterly destroyed himself, and _he didn’t even know it_.

            He was also threatening her with an arrow, and if he could shoot down a drone in the dark while drunk, he was a force to be reckoned with.  She had to swallow her horror and _focus_.

            “You know what I think?” Robin asked, his eyes flicking from face to face.  “I think Nottingham sent the lot of you, and that mechanical bird, too.  He’s got enough money for that kind of nonsense.  So if you’ve got another story to tell me, you’d better get on with it.”

            “Nottingham is dead,” said Natasha – it was the first thing that popped into her head, and she decided to run with it.  “Lady Marian sent us.  She wants you to come home.  The Sheriff of Nottingham is dead and the king is offering you a pardon.”

            Robin snorted.  “Why would the king want to pardon me?” he asked.

            “For giving to the poor,” said Nat, but she already had a bad feeling.  The idea of robbing the rich to give to the poor had always seemed one of the most romantic and therefore unlikely ideas in the Robin Hood mythos.

            “What?”  Robin tilted his head in confusion.

            “Robbing the rich and giving to the poor,” Sam put in.  “Isn’t that what you do?”

            “Oh, of course!” Robin laughed.  “That’s absolutely what I’m doing out here!  Do you _see_ any poor people for me to give to?  Hell, do you see any _rich_ people for me to rob?  It’s not like I just hide out here with a bunch of other thugs so I won’t be hanged for poaching, and steal the occasional loaf of bread or tin of ale when I get sick of spit-roasted rabbit!  Now the woods are crawling with people dressed like clowns and the rest of the gang is dead or captured.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out I’ll be next.”

            Part of Nat felt rather vindicated – it was nice that _somebody_ else here cared about historical accuracy?  The situation, however, was going nowhere, and sooner or later somebody was going to get shot.  She decided to try something else.  “I have something to show you,” she said, and reached into her purse.  Maybe he would recognize one of the pendants with the Grail fragments.

            “Don’t move!” Robin ordered.  The point of his arrow had been drifting as different people spoke and his arm got tired – now he swung it back towards Nat, and he was drunk and jumpy enough to lose his hold on the shaft.  The arrow went flying, but Sir Stephen whipped his shield into the way and the arrow, like the bullets on Flotta, bounced right off.  Sir Stephen then charged the archer, swinging the shield as if it were itself a weapon rather than a defense.

            Robin already had another arrow nocked, but with his eyes on Sir Stephen, Nat seized the opportunity to drop into a crouch and kick his legs out from under him.  He saw this coming, too, and Somersaulted over Sir Stephen to land back on his feet.  Nat grabbed his bow as he went by, trying to pull it out of his hands.  Robin swung it and her around until he had her pinned against him with the bow across her neck, and pressed the wood against her larynx.

            “If anybody moves, I’ll strangle her!” he shouted at the others.

            Nat drove her elbow into his gut, grabbed the bow, and smacked him across the face with it.  He staggered several steps to the side and wiped at a bloody lip with his sleeve, then lowered his head and charged her.  Sir Stephen jumped on him and pinned him to the ground, and Sharon and Sam ran in to grab Robin’s arms.  Allen Rushman, wanting to help, undid the buckle that held Robin’s quiver to his belt, then took it and went to stand beside Nat, who was busy unstringing the bow.  It had an impressive draw weight, at least a hundred and thirty pounds.  She doubted any of her group would be able to fire it, besides possibly Sir Stephen.

            “Not my enemies, are you?” sneered Robin.  “You may have caught the others, but you won’t get _me_!”

            He moved his neck suddenly, slamming his head against Sam’s – Sam yelped and involuntarily let go of him.  Robin stamped on Sharon’s foot and elbowed her in the gut, then lunged for Nat, hoping to retrieve his bow.  She and Sir Stephen both responded at once, Sir Stephen by throwing himself on top of Robin, and Nat by swinging the bow like a club, aiming to hit Robin across the chest and wind him.  She did not have enough warning to adjust her aim, and ended up hitting Robin in the head.  At the same time, Allen Jones saw a chance to redeem his previous inaction, and yanked an arrow out of the quiver to stab into Robin’s side.  Three overlapping attempts to disable him all added up to Robin Hood falling to his knees, then on his face in the dirt, unconscious.

            Allen stared in horror at what he’d just done, then moved to pull the arrow out again.  Sam stopped him.

            “Don’t do that,” he said.  “Pulling it out here will just do more damage.  We’ll take it out when I can do it properly, in clean environment.”

            “Right.  Sorry.”  Allen straightened up again, shaking his arm.  Apparently the blow had hurt him, too.  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, looking at Nat.  “I just… I wanted to protect you!”

            “I don’t need protecting!  I could take care of him better than you ever will!” snapped Nat.  “Here.  Hold this.”  She pushed the bow into Allen’s hands and knelt down for a look at Robin’s head.  She’d smacked him just above the left cheekbone, and it was already starting to swell.  He was going to have a terrific black eye, but the bones around his eye didn’t seem to be broken, at least.  They wouldn’t know if she’d done any permanent damage until he came to.

            “We need to go someplace where the light’s better,” said Sam.  “I need… I need an operating room, honestly.”

            “If we take him to a hospital we’re gonna get charged with assault, and he’s going to end up in the psych ward,” said Nat.  “We’ll find a hotel room or something, and you can do what you do there.  First we need to tie him up or something, though, because I don’t know how long he’ll be out for.”

            Sharon was panting, one hand against the ribs under her right breast, where she’d been shot at on Flotta – Robin’s elbow must have hit her bruises.  “Here,” she said, once she’d caught her breath enough to speak.  She reached into her jacket pocket to pull out two interlocked sets of handcuffs, which must have come from when they were shackled to the fence on Flotta.  “I figured these might come in handy,” she explained.

            She cuffed Robin’s wrists and ankles, while Sam wrapped his t-shirt around the arrow, both to stabilize it and to soak up any blood.  Sam and Sir Stephen carried the unconscious man back to the car park – and there they realized they had a problem.  With the addition of Robin, they now had one more person than there were seats in the car.

            Sam definitely needed to come, in case Robin’s condition got worse.  Nat needed to be there, too, because she knew a couple of tricks that could knock him out again if he woke up and became belligerent – although those might be dangerous.  And neither could drive at the same time as they looked after Robin, so at least one more person was required.  After a quick discussion, they decided to leave Sharon and Sir Stephen in the car park with instructions to meet them in the nearby town of Edwinstowe, which would take about forty-five minutes on foot.  Nat was a little anxious about making anybody walk in the dark through unfamiliar countryside, but Sharon had her revolver and Sir Stephen his shield.  They ought to be able to handle it.

            That left Allen to do the driving, and Nat was a bit worried about him, too.  He kept flexing his right hand, the one he’d used to stab Robin, and then looking at it as if he wasn’t quite sure it was his.  Despite his duck hunting, this was a man to whom violence, at least against another human being, was utterly foreign.  That wasn’t really a bad thing, Nat thought – she’d practically had violence served to her with her breakfast cereal, and she’d done far too many terrible things without thinking twice about them.  Allen Jones had probably never hurt anybody on purpose in his life.  She might have been angry with him for his cowardice earlier, but wasn’t that the type of father Nat would have wanted for herself?

            They’d laid Robin across the back seat, with his hands cuffed behind him and his feet shackled together at the ankles.  His head was in Natasha’s lap so she could do something if he began to wake up, and Sam was kneeling on the floor of the car.  He’d cut Robin’s tunic open with the nail scissors on his pocket knife, and was now examining the arrow wound.

            “How’s it look?” asked Nat.

            “Good news, I think,” Sam said.  He was using the flashlight on his phone to inspect the area.  “I don’t think it pierced the pleura – looks like it skidded off the rib and now it’s lodged in the costal cartilage.  It’ll hurt for a while but it shouldn’t case any long-term problems as long as we can prevent infection.  Probably gave your arm a hell of a jolt,” he added to Allen, and Nat remembered Allen shaking his arm.  “What did you stab him for?  We had him.”

            “Last time somebody came at her I didn’t do anything!” said Allen, voice quavering.  “I didn’t think… I couldn’t just stand there and watch her be attacked _again_.”

            Nat sighed.  “What did I tell you _after_ that?” she asked.  “You’re not trained for this kind of thing.  If you’d been an inch lower you could have killed him.”

            “Not even an inch,” said Sam.  “Half would have done it – right into the lung.”

            Robin’s head moved, and Nat put a hand on his forehead.  “Better hurry,” she said.  “He’s waking up.”  There were lights around them now – they were entering the town.

            “There’s a sign here for a bed and breakfast up ahead,” Allen said.  “Will that do?”

            “Sure,” Nat nodded.  “Just get us there.”

            A moment later, Robin Hood groaned and his eyes opened.  He blinked up at Nat a couple of times, his eyes focused on infinity, then tried to move and realized he was in handcuffs.  She moved her hand from his forehead to his chest.

            “Don’t move,” she warned him.

            “What happened?” he asked.

            “I hit you really hard on the head,” Nat replied, matter-of-fact.  “How many fingers am I holding up?”  She offered two.

            “Three,” he replied, then frowned.  “Could be four.  Can’t tell if that’s the headache or the beer.”

            “Probably both,” said Nat.  “Do you remember your name?”  In real life a knock on the head just hurt, but in soap operas it could restore memory.  In a world where the Loch Ness Monster existed, why not?

            “Robin of Barton,” he replied immediately.

            Nat shrugged.  “Worth a try,” she murmured.


	17. The Sword of Damocles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extra update ahead of me being away for two weeks. I don't know if I'll have internet to update during that time, but I promise another chapter as soon as I get back!

            They found their way to the little bed and breakfast, which bore the very grand name _The Edwinstowe Arms_ even though it was only three bedrooms in the upstairs of a 19 th century red brick house.  While Nat distracted the middle-aged couple who ran the place, Sam and Allen helped Robin Hood up the stairs to a room.  Nat paid up front and joined them a few minutes later.

            The room was small but cozy, with strongly patterned eighties wallpaper and lots of throw pillows on the bed, which had been set aside so make room for Robin on the bed.  Sam had cut the injured man out of his jacket and tunic, and he was now lying on his side in the bed, his hands still cuffed behind him.  Without the clothing, Nat could see another of the metal crosses, hanging on a leather cord around his neck.  Sam had gotten the arrowhead out of Robin’s sided, and was now cleaning the wound with peroxide from the room’s first aid kit.  Allen was holding the kit and handing Sam things when he asked for them – Nat suspected this was not the most efficient thing to do, but perhaps it was helping to assuage his guilt.

            “If you guys are the ones who tried to kill me in the first place, why are you patching me up?” Robin asked.  He wasn’t moving, knowing that to do so would only cause him more pain, but his expression was deeply suspicious.  “Is Nottingham’s bounty _that_ much more for me alive?”

            “Would you believe we’re doing it out of the goodness of our hearts?” asked Nat.  She pulled up a chair to sit and watch.

            “No,” said Robin.  “You said _you_ hit me – who _stabbed_ me?”

            “That was me.”  Allen raised a sheepish hand.

            “And _I’m_ trying to sew you up,” said Sam.  “So stop moving, or you’re gonna get stabbed again.”

            “Doctors are supposed to get you drunk before they go sawing things off,” Robin complained.  “That stuff I found stashed in the woods doesn’t count.  My grandmother’s cider is stronger.”

            Natasha cocked her head and considered the situation.  Robin was lying on a brightly patterned comforter on a soft bed, in a room that was lit without fire and decorated in a style that would have been considered palatial in the twelfth century.  In movies, time travellers always seemed astonished by the future, pointing at and questioning every little thing, or blaming it on witchcraft.  Sir Stephen had taken it all in stride, and at the time Nat had assumed that he was subconsciously remembering that these things were normal and harmless.  That had turned out not to be true of Sir Stephen, but now she wondered if it were true of Robin Hood.  Was he recalling his modern alter ego?

            “Robin,” she said, “where do you think you are?”

            He winced as Sam stuck the needle into him again.  “Hell if I know,” he said.  “Somebody’s manor.  Anybody who has this kind of money doesn’t _need_ the bounty from turning me in!”

            “And how do you think you got here?” asked Nat.

            “In your fancy little wagon out there,” said Robin.  “Is that a trick question?”

            “Doesn’t any of this seem a little weird to you?” she wanted to know.

            Robin tried to sit up a little and look around the room, but it didn’t last long – Sam pushed him back into a reclining position.

            “What did I tell you about moving?” he said.

            Robin sighed.  “If you’re trying to impress me, I’m impressed,” he said.  “I don’t know where I am or what half this stuff is.  I’m not gonna worry about that right now, because I’m too busy worrying about how long I’ve got before you throw me off a chair with a rope around my neck.  Okay?”

            That, Nat supposed, was fair.

            By the time Sam had finished with Robin’s arrow wound, Sir Stephen and Sharon had arrived.  They’d stopped for pizza, and Sir Stephen was carrying three boxes as he entered the room.  Robin looked up from watching Sam put bandages on him, and inhaled deeply.

            “That smells amazing, whatever it is,” he said.  “I’m betting I don’t get any.”

            “Depends,” said Nat.  “We’ll have to un-cuff you if you’re going to eat it.  Do you promise you won’t attack anybody again?”  They’d left his bow and arrows in the car, but he’d demonstrated that he was a respectable hand-to-hand fighter, too.

            “For something that smells that good, I’ll lick it off the floor if I have to,” Robin said.  “I’ve been living off my own cooking for six months.”

            Nat observed that nowhere in there had he promised what she’d asked, but when Sharon removed the handcuffs the only thing Robin fell upon was the pizza.  Sir Stephen handed him a slice, gooey with mozzarella, and Robin bit half of it off in one go.  His eyes rolled back in his head as he tasted it.

            “Oh, _wow_ ,” he said.  “This must have cost a fortune!  I’ve changed my mind.  Go ahead and hang me.  It’ll be worth it to have tasted this!”

            “We’re not here to have you hanged,” said Nat.

            “Then what _are_ you going to do with me?” Robin asked, stuffing more pizza into his mouth.  His words were hard to make out as he spoke around the food.  “You know, if you’d just told me to begin with, you might not have had to stab me.  Just a thought.”

            “You weren’t listening to us long enough to let us,” Nat told him – but now they had an interesting dilemma.  How were they going to break the truth to him?  With Sir Stephen she’d just outright told him he didn’t exist, but that hadn’t gone very well.  What might work better?  “Can I ask you another question?  What year is it?”

            Robin frowned.  “What _year_?” he asked.  “Is it supposed to have a name?”

            “No, a number, counted from the birth of Christ,” said Nat.  “King Richard was crowned in 1189.”

            He shrugged.  “I’m not a chronicler.  I don’t keep track.”

            Annoying as that was, Nat couldn’t fault him for anachronism.  Throughout the middle ages it was unlikely that most people had any idea what year it was, or would have any need to.

            “Let me try something,” said Sharon.  She brought u a news article on her phone, from a local Nottinghamshire website, and enlarged the photograph with it to show Robin.  The picture showed Mrs. Francis addressing a group of people at the church of St. George, with her sister and children around her.  The accompanying text described her attempts to get attention for the case.

            “Do you know this woman?” asked Sharon.

            She hadn’t even finished speaking when Robin’s eyes widened in recognition.  He swallowed his mouthful of pizza in a lump that Nat feared he would choke on, then snatched the phone from Sharon’s hands.  In the process he touched the screen, and the image vanished.

            “Get it back!” he said, pushing the phone back at Sharon.

            “Who is she?” asked Sharon.  She brought the picture up again.

            “That’s Marian!” Robin said.  “Why is she wearing _trousers_?”

            “She’s looking for you,” Sharon told him.  “But this woman isn’t Maid Marian, and you’re not Robin Hood.  Just let us explain,” she added, when Robin opened his mouth again to protest.

            “Allow me,” said Sir Stephen.  He’d been munching eagerly on pizza, too, but now he put down the box and pulled up another chair to sit facing Robin.  “I am perhaps the best to tell you.  My name is Sir Stephen of Rogsey.  Have you heard it before?”

            Robin shook his head.

            “I would have died a hundred years before your time,” Sir Stephen said, “but this is not your time, nor mine.  Many centuries have passed since then.  We are in search of the Holy Grail, which we are told has the power to create things that ought not to exist, so long as somebody believes in them.  It created myself, according to Natalie, who says I am naught but a legend brought to life.”

            “It created me, too,” said Allen quietly.  “She made me up, because her real father abandoned her.”

            “It seems to have created you, as well,” Sir Stephen went on, “but not in quite the same way.  May I show him the fragments, Natalie?”

            Nat handed them over, and Sir Stephen explained to Robin Hood what they did and what seemed to have become of the missing Mr. Francis.  At first Robin seemed cynical, but he kept glancing at the picture on Sharon’s phone – he quickly learned that he could keep it in place by resting a finger on it, and did so.  His expression became thoughtful, then worried.

            “Wait,” he said, holding up a hand.  “Just a second.  You’re saying there’s another version of me who’s married to Marian or whatever her name is, has two kids and my own house and my own land and no price on my head and I… I just _wished_ all that away to go live in the woods like a stray dog?”  He shook his head, uncomprehending.  “Why would anybody do _that_?”

            “You were upset about some stuff,” said Nat.  “You’d had some bad experiences in the army, and you’d gone partly deaf.”

            “If an angel appeared to me and told me I could have all that in exchange for my ears, I would _cut them off_!” Robin protested.  “I don’t… I’ve never owned anything in my life!  I’d certainly never be allowed to marry Marian.  I mean, my parents were _servants_ in her father’s manor.  The reason I had to leave was because her jerk uncle thought she liked me too much and it would ruin her prospects.  There’s no way… is that _allowed_ in your world?  Or… your time, or whatever this is?”

            “Nobles marrying commoners?  Happens all the time,” Nat said.  “Even kings do it.”

            “I don’t… this is ridiculous!”  Robin rubbed his forehead.  “None of this makes sense.  I want to see her.  If I hear it from Marian,” he started to get up, “then I can… _ow_!”  Robin sat down again to keep from stretching his stitches.

            “Sorry,” Allen said again.

            “Maybe tomorrow,” Sam suggested.  “You need to let that start healing, and if you’ve been living out in the woods for any length of time, some hot water and a good night’s sleep will help, too.”

            Robin looked up again, almost as eagerly as he had when Sharon and Sir Stephen brought the pizza in.  “You’ve got hot water?”

            Robin Hood took a very long shower, singing to himself and stamping his feet to make the water splash, while Sir Stephen and the others ate the rest of the pizza.  The last slice was gone by the time they heard the water shut off, and a minute or so later Robin emerged from the bathroom, dripping wet and wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe.  Without a word to any of them he flopped into the big armchair in the corner, and was apparently asleep within seconds.

            As they sorted the pizza boxes, napkins, and soda cans into garbage and recycling, Allen took a deep breath and said again, “I’m sorry.”

            “It’s fine,” said Nat.

            “I know you can look after yourself,” said Allen, “and I know you don’t think I’m your father.  I just didn’t want to feel like I’d failed you again.”

            Nat shut her eyes and sighed.  After being angry with his inaction earlier, she was now angry about his initiative.  He must feel like he couldn’t do anything right, and even as annoyed as she was, it was hard not to also feel some sympathy for him.  “You know what they say about the road to hell, right?” she asked.  “I know what you were trying to do, but please don’t do it again.  I don’t want to see you kill anyone.”  Nat was quite sure now that Allen wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.

            “I don’t want to kill anyone either,” he said, “but I had to do _something_.”

            “No, you didn’t,” Nat said firmly.  “Next time, think about whether you _could_ kill somebody, and ask yourself whether it’s worth having that on your conscience.  Think how you’d feel if Robin had died.  What would you say to Mrs. Francis about it?”

            Nat’s own conscience was a stunted beast – she’d been raised not to have one, and trying to develop it now was a painful, drawn-out process that happened in fits and starts.  Sometimes it would lie dormant for days at a time, or duck out of sight to let her do something like shoot Nazis on Flotta, but then it would bubble up again with a vengeance to make her feel guilty about things that weren’t even entirely her fault, like the death of the HYDRA survivor under the Red Death’s spell.  It grew stronger the longer she abstained from doing anything awful, but the reverse was also true: the more terrible things she did, the less bad she felt about it.  Now that Allen had stabbed somebody once, it would be easier to do the next time.

            Allen nodded slowly.  “Yeah,” he said.  “I’m glad I didn’t hurt him too badly.  I… I don’t know.”  He hung his head.  “I have no idea what I’m doing here anymore.”

            “I don’t think any of us do,” said Nat.  She put a hand on his arm and gave it what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze.  “Next time, don’t just do the first thing that pops into your head because you feel like you have to do _something_.  Have a specific goal in mind, and be sure it’s important.  If you can’t come up with that, then the best thing to do is stay out of the way.  It’s not cowardice,” she added.  “It’s knowing your limits.”

            “That’s good advice,” he said.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”  Although the way he said it, Nat could tell he still felt like dead weight.

            He was supposed to be _her_ father, she thought, and yet here she was, in a sense mothering _him_.  “Get some sleep,” she suggested.  “It’s gonna be another long day tomorrow.”

            “Yeah.  Thanks, Natalie,” he said.

            “Natasha,” she corrected.

            It was meant to be an olive branch, almost a gift.  She hadn’t yet told any of the others her real name – or at least, the name she called herself in her head, which was about as close as any name of hers could come.  All it did, however, was remind Allen that she wasn’t who he thought she was.  How could she be his daughter, when he didn’t even know her name?

            “Natasha,” he said sadly.  “Sleep well.” 

* * *

 

            The owners of the _Edwinstowe Arms_ hadn’t realized there were six people in the party, and were a little shocked when Nat and the others showed up in the morning for the ‘breakfast’ part of the agreement.  They, and the Chinese-Canadian couple staying in the other room, were even more surprised to see how much Sir Stephen could eat.  Robin Hood didn’t have the same kind of enhanced metabolism, but in his world he’d been scratching a living out of the woods for the last few months, only to find himself suddenly surrounded by twenty-first century plenty.  He came in a very respectable second.

            After breakfast the group split up.  Sharon and Sir Stephen drove down to Mansfield to exchange the group’s rented car for something bigger, while Natasha ran out to a consignment shop to find Robin some clothes that wouldn’t make him look like he’d stepped out of a storybook.  She returned with a pair of jeans, a black windbreaker, and a button-down shirt that she hadn’t been able to resist, as it was the same shade of purple as the stolen coat he’d been wearing when they found him.  The association between Robin Hood at the colour green, she thought, was forever ruined for her.

            She returned to find Allen pretending to do a crossword puzzle while watching out of the corner of his eye as Sam checked up on Robin’s injuries.  He’d just finished with the stab wound, so Natasha gave Robin the clothes and told him to get dressed, then got out of the way so Sam could look at his scalp.

            “You’ll have a bump,” was Sam’s analysis, “but I don’t think you’ve banged your brain up too badly.  Just let me know if you get a headache, or if your vision starts going funny.”  He patted Robin on the back, then nodded to Nat.  “Seems like you know what you’re about when it comes to hitting people.”

            “One of my specialties,” Natasha agreed.

            “A rare talent,” Robin said.  “How about this?”  He reached under the shirt to rub his side.  Sam had put a fresh bandage on it.

            “That’ll take a few days before the stitches can come out,” Sam replied, “but it’ll heal.  You won’t want to try to do any sit-ups for the next couple of weeks.”

            “Because I _don’t_ know what I’m doing when it comes to stabbing people,” sighed Allen.  “Sorry about that.”

            “Nobody else who’s stabbed me has ever bothered apologizing for it,” said Robin, managing to imply that this was not an uncommon occurrence.  “So just for that I’m going to have to forgive you.”

            Natasha picked up the rest of the newspaper Allen had gotten the puzzle from, and began flipping through it to see if any unusual events caught her eye – anything that might suggested where Zola and the Red Death were, or another of the Grail fragments.  “If you want to stab somebody to kill, go for the shoulder,” she said.  “Slash from the clavicle down to the armpit, and you’ll get the axillary artery.  That’ll bleed out in a minute or so.”

            Allen opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again and looked at Sam for confirmation.  Sam nodded.

            “What if I _don’t_ want to kill the guy?” asked Allen.

            “Don’t stab him,” said Sam and Robin at the same time.

            “Back of the knee,” said Nat.  “Sever the hamstring and he’ll need surgery before he can walk again – although Sam and Robin are right.  Knives are not good for disabling, especially when your target is moving.  The law will consider it use of lethal force whether you meant to kill or not.  A taser or pepper spray is better for self-defence.”  She considered that idea.  “Would you like some?”  He might not be able to make himself _use_ it, but having a non-lethal weapon might help Allen feel better.

            “That’s not what I… I didn’t need a lesson,” Allen grumbled.

            A vehicle horn honked outside.  Grateful for the distraction, Allen went to the window to look.

            “Oh, Inspector Carter and Sir Stephen are back,” he said.  “They’ve got a van.”

            Nat joined him to see for herself.  Sharon was climbing out of the driver’s side of a black minivan, while Sir Stephen was already on his way up to knock at the door.  Nat finished her coffee and put the newspaper on the end of the bed.  “Let’s head out.  I think Mrs. Needham will have a heart attack if she sees Sir Steve again.”  The poor woman had already looked like she was seriously reconsidering her ‘free second helping’ policy.

            They gathered up their stuff and went to meet Sharon and Sir Stephen at the door, and Robin Hood noticed something about modern vehicles that he apparently hadn’t while being carted around half-conscious the previous night.

            “Where’s the horses?” he asked.

            “No horses,” said Nat, “but yes seat belts.”  She demonstrated how they worked.

            “I don’t know if I trust a wagon that doesn’t have horses,” Robin observed.  He got his own seat belt twisted around, but it did buckle, which Nat supposed was good enough.  “Then again, I don’t trust horses, either.  Horses are bastards.”

            “Then you’re gonna have a problem getting anywhere,” Sam observed.  “Do you even trust your own two feet?”

            “Not when I’ve been drinking,” Robin said cheerfully.

            They got back on the A453, heading south to Barton-in-Fabis.  On the way, Sharon pulled up Google Street View and showed Robin Hood the Francis family’s house.  He quickly figured out how to zoom in on the picture and study it in more detail, and he shook his head in amazement at what he saw.

            “Look at that,” he said.  “That’s a _beautiful_ house.  All brick, with a tile roof!  I remember the servants’ quarters at the manor used to leak when the thatch rotted, and we had to stuff rags and tar into the holes because Marian’s father was too tight-fisted to have it fixed properly.  Who would ever have thought I’d own a house like that?”  He was still in disbelief as he handed Sharon her phone back.  “If I met this other me I’d punch him in the teeth!  What an idiot!”

            “You are a lucky man,” Sir Stephen told him gravely.  “Perhaps your alter ego is a fool, but you still have that place in the world that you can return to.  From what I’ve been told, I was brought to life from a statue.  When we have retrieved the Grail you may yet be able to go home, whereas I do not know what I am to do.”

            “I thought you said you didn’t plan that far ahead,” said Sam.

            “I try not to,” Sir Stephen agreed, “but the idea cannot be avoided forever.”

            Nat was the one who’d brought it up, wasn’t she?  She’d made him think about it, and now it was looming unavoidably over his head.  It made her wonder, again, what _would_ happen once they got rid of the Grail.  In fantasy stories the effects of such a MacGuffin usually vanished when it was destroyed, but they weren’t planning on destroying the Grail, just getting rid of it.  Unless the thing had an ‘off’ switch or something, that probably meant that the alterations it had made to the world would stick around.

            On a lot of levels that wasn’t a nice thought, especially as far as Robin Hood was concerned – but the alternative, that everything would just go back to the way it was before, wasn’t very attractive, either.  If the Grail could simply be turned off, then Robin would go back to being Clint Francis and the Red Death to being a statue – but Sir Stephen would turn to stone again, too, and Allen Jones would probably just disappear.  That didn’t feel right at all.  Having come into being, they were _people_ , and to erase them would be to murder them.  Nat couldn’t lecture Allen about meaning or not meaning to kill, and then do _that_ to him.  Could it be _partly_ turned off, to pick and choose what went and what stayed?  In that case, would Sir Stephen and the Red Death be considered a single event, so that the first would have to be sacrificed to get rid of the second?  No wonder Sir Stephen didn’t like thinking about it.

            For the time being, however, a distraction appeared in the form of something else that couldn’t be put off forever: they were getting close to Barton-in-Fabis.  It would be good for Robin to see the woman he believed was Maid Marian, and good for Laura Francis to know that her husband was at least not _physically_ hurt.  Introducing them to each other in this state was going to be tricky, though, and everybody was relieved when Sharon volunteered to do the job.  She had experience in telling people that their relatives were missing or dead, but this wasn’t the same.

            There was less activity in the town today, but still more than was probably normal.  It was Audrey who was presiding outside the church today, along with a man who must have been her husband or boyfriend, while Laura waited at home for word.  That was good – they didn’t want to have to introduce Robin to the entire town.  They pulled up outside the house, and Sharon tucked her phone into her jacket pocket and undid her seat belt.

            “I’ll ask if she _wants_ to see you,” she told Robin.  “She may not.  If she doesn’t, we’re leaving.  You understand?”

            “Yeah,” he said unhappily.  “I understand.”

            The rest of the group watched through the van windows as Sharon rang the doorbell at the Francis house.  Robin leaned his forehead against the window and shaded his eyes with his hand to see better.  A stranger answered, perhaps one of Laura’s friends.  She spoke to Sharon for a moment and then vanished back inside.  Sharon waited a few moments on the step, and then Laura Francis came to the door, with a girl of about six at her side.  Nat heard Robin gasp.

            “That’s her,” he whispered.  “The kid must be… is that our daughter?  Other me is _such_ an idiot.”

            Sharon and Laura spoke for a while.  They kept their voices low, and none of the words made it as far as the van, but at one point Sharon stepped closer to put an arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders as Laura became upset at something she said.  Laura blew her nose on a tissue while Sharon patted her back.  Then the detective gestured for Laura to wait, and returned to the van.

            “What did she say?” Robin asked, when Sharon opened the door and poked her head in.  She kept her body in the doorway, Natasha noticed – nobody was allowed to get out yet.

            “What did _you_ say?” asked Nat.

            Sharon glanced over her shoulder and then sight.  “I couldn’t think of a way to tell her the truth without sounding like a nut case,” she admitted, “so I told her he had a psychological breakdown and we’re taking him to London to see a specialist.”

            “You told her I’m crazy?” Robin complained, but then he paused, thought about it, and his shoulders sagged.  “Yeah, maybe I am.  Can I talk to her?”

            “That depends,” said Sharon.  “What are you going to say?”

            “I’m gonna tell her I’m sorry,” said Robin, “and I don’t know how I broke it, but I promise to fix it and come home.”

            “All right,” said Sharon, though she sounded unsure whether this were really a good idea.  “I’ll go get her.  Sam, you’re the doctor…”

            “I’m a surgeon,” he said.  “Not a psychiatrist.”

            “Yeah, but you’ve got MD after your name,” Sharon said.  “Think of something reassuring and medical to tell her.”

            Laura left her friend in charge of the two children – the girl had a brother a couple of years older – and followed Sharon down to the van.  Sam got out with Robin and shut the door, and Nat reached up between the seats to turn the radio on, so that pop music could drown out whatever was being said outside.  That was none of anybody’s business by Robin’s and Laura’s.  She did wonder why Clint Francis had decided, perhaps for the purposes of his book, that the relationship between Robin Hood and Maid Marian would work the way he had… she couldn’t ever remember seeing the same situation in a story.  Was it because he felt distanced from his wife, so he’d imagined her in the role of somebody beloved but unobtainable?

            “Poor woman,” Allen remarked.  “I wonder if he talks the way he used to.  I know he doesn’t sound all fancy like Sir Stephen, but he might not talk like Mr. Francis, either.”

            “Do I talk like _you_ remember?” Nat asked.

            “No,” said Allen, without meeting her eyes.  “You used to smile more.”

            “I’m not very smiley,” Nat agreed.  She hadn’t thought of it that way, but it must be difficult to look at somebody you loved and see a stranger inhabiting their body.  Poor Laura Francis – and poor Allen Jones.

            Outside, they saw Robin bow to Mrs. Francis and kiss her hand, and Sam patted him on the shoulder and tried, as instructed, to say something comforting.  Robin took both Laura’s hands and said something to her, and she nodded, then turned away and let Sharon lead her back to the house.  Robin stood as still as a deer, watching her go, even after Sam opened the door for him to get back into the van.

            “Robin,” Sam said.  “Come on.  We’ve got stuff to do.”

            Reluctantly, Robin took his seat again, a sober expression on his face.

            “How do I get my memory back?” he asked.

            “We don’t know,” said Nat.  Maybe they could give Laura Francis a fragment of her own and convince her that all was well.  Would that do it, or would it just cause a different set of problems?  “The first step, I guess, is finding the Grail.”  The question of what they would do _after_ that was getting more and more complicated.  Robin had promised Mrs. Francis her husband back, and they would have to at least _try_ to keep that promise for him.


	18. The Road to London

            They stopped in Leicester to grab some lunch, and then Sharon took over driving while Nat moved to the back seat, next to Robin, to eat her take-out sandwich.  Robin Hood had been talkative before they’d stopped in Barton-in-Fabis, but now he was quiet, looking out the window at the countryside rolling by and chewing thoughtfully.  Nat wondered what he was thinking.  Was he imagining the life he could have with Maid Marian?  Wondering what had possessed his alternate self to abandon it?  Pondering the evidently malleable nature of reality?  She didn’t want to interrupt by asking him.

            Besides, she had thoughts of her own to get lost in.  Natasha had escaped the secret agent business and gone into hiding as a nobody academic at a university that wasn’t known for the field she’d chosen, because she wanted to be a _normal person_.  It was a lie, of course – she had never been and would never be _normal_ – but ‘truth’ and ‘lies’ were no longer meaningful categories.  If she _really_ wanted it, that kind of life was within her grasp.  All she needed was another Grail fragment, and she could _be_ Natalie Jones, or any other identity she wished to assume.

            Natalie Jones would not be a bad person to be.  She’d grown up in a suburb with parents who loved her and usually had enough money to get by.  She had, as Allen had said, danced in ballet recitals and built snowmen and angsted over career choices.  She’d probably done things she later regretted, because everybody did, but she was mostly happy with her life – and most importantly, she’d never tortured or killed anybody, or been locked up in the cold or forced to abandon a friend on the tundra.  That had been the whole point of creating her.  Natalie Allison Jones was perfectly, beautifully _ordinary_.

            But she also wasn’t Natasha Romanov.  The terrible things Natasha had seen and done in her past had brought her to where she was today, and had taught her lessons that Natalie Jones would never have the opportunity to learn.  Natalie Jones wouldn’t have been able to fight her way through the HYDRA troops on Flotta, or knock out Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, or work out how to destroy the Red Death’s colossus.  The situation Nat was in now needed Natasha Romanov.

            Even after this was over, though… no, the thought of re-writing her past in such a _real_ fashion made Nat recoil as if she’d just found a scorpion crawling up her arm.  There was a lot of ugly truth in her past, and she’d told a lot of lies to cover it.  In the future she would continue to tell lies, because it was the only way she could avoid being thrown in prison, but _she_ would rather know the truth even if nobody else did.  Maybe that was another reason she’d chosen archaeology – because you could _learn_ from the truth.  The ugly parts of it told you the worst that could happen, and you could look back on them and decide to do better in the future.  Lies couldn’t teach, they could only disguise, and when you hid the painful lessons you couldn’t learn or grow from them.  Lies stuck you right back where you started and forced you to make the same mistakes all over again.

            “Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,” she murmured.

            “Hmm?” Robin asked, around his mouthful of sandwich.

            “Nothing,” said Nat quickly.  “I probably ought to warn you guys about London.”  Robin Hood and Sir Stephen would have thought of the London of their own centuries as a teeming metropolis.  They’d been absolutely astonished by the size of Inverness and Nottingham, but that probably wasn’t enough to prepare them.  “The government doesn’t move around anymore, like it did in the Middle Ages.  It stays in London.  Sometimes the Queen goes other places, but Parliament, which actually rules the country, is in London, and it’s also the economic centre.  It’s one of the biggest cities in the word, with a population of… I think eight million?”  She was pretty sure she’d read that somewhere, but couldn’t recall where.

            “Million?” asked Sir Stephen.

            “Yes, Million,” said Natasha.  She took another bite of her sandwich, which she’d almost forgotten about as she pondered her past and future.

            “How many is that?” he wanted to know.

            Nat hadn’t realized he didn’t know what the word meant – she’d assumed he just didn’t believe her.  She quickly chewed and swallowed so she could explain.  “Oh.  A million is a thousand thousands.”

            Sir Stephen, sitting in the seat directly in front of hers, didn’t answer.

            “Do you know how many a thousand is?” Nat asked.

            “Of course I do,” said Sir Stephen.  “So if you were to divide all the inhabitants of London into cohorts of a thousand men…”

            “Men, women, and children,” Nat corrected.  “We count heads nowadays, not families.”

            “A thousand _people_ ,” Sir Stephen corrected himself.  “You could do so _eight thousand_ times?”

            Poor man, Nat thought – he probably considered a _thousand_ to be a very large number.  William the Conqueror had overrun England with only ten thousand men, and at the time that had been an almost unimaginably large army.  And as it turned out, an _army_ was exactly what Sir Stephen was thinking about.

            “If half of them are male,” he mused, “and a mere quarter of fighting age, your Queen could call up a force the like of which has never been seen on earth!  That, from London alone!”

            Nat shook her head.  “It doesn’t work that way,” she said.  “These people aren’t soldiers.  The Queen can’t just order them to fight for her.  If there were a battle in London, they would have to leave the city.”  She hadn’t thought of that yet, but if worst came to worst and the Red Death showed up to take the Grail by force, London would offer him no end of people to stab or building to knock down.  Not to mention the unbelievable carnage if something like that colossus got loose in a densely populated area.

            “if she had enough weapons to arm them,” Sir Stephen insisted, “or even just ordered them to take up their pitchforks and axes…”

            “They don’t _have_ pitchforks and axes, because they’re not farmers, either!” said Nat.  “They’re… they’re merchants and scholars and tradespeople and… and other things you wouldn’t know what they are if I told you.  The Queen can’t force people to fight when they’re not trained for it.”

            “If your Queen cannot pardon a criminal nor raise an army, what _can_ she do?” Sir Stephen asked, exasperated.

            “She cuts a lot of ribbons,” said Sam.

            “Shakes a lot of hands,” Sharon agreed.  “Waves at crowds.”

            “She’s on your money,” Allen offered.

            “Who makes the laws?” asked Sir Stephen.  “Who leads you in battle?”

            “We vote on people for those positions,” Nat explained.  “Like the Romans did, but usually with less bribery.  Usually.”

            “But…” Sir Stephen began.

            Sharon interrupted him.  “We haven’t seen any sign of the bad guys in a while, have we?” she asked, her voice rather louder than necessary.

            “No, we haven’t,” Nat agreed – which was strange, now that she thought of it.  Up until they’d left Inverness, Zola and the Red Death had been beside or even ahead of them the whole time.  Zola had beaten them to Dr. Hughes to steal the map, and then arrived at the stone circle on Flotta mere hours behind them.  Now, however, Nat and the others had been to Barton, to Sherwood Forest, and were on their way to London, and hadn’t encountered any sign of opposition.  “What do you think that means?” she asked.  Should they be worried.

            “Perhaps it only means that the ivy and horseshoes are working,” Sir Stephen suggested.  “I never thought I would say such a thing, but bless the witches who sold them to us!  Clearly they knew their work!”

            Nat wasn’t quite that much of an optimist.  “Or it could mean that they’re doing something important while we’re distracted by things that are actually irrelevant,” she said.  “If they already knew that Francis had used up his fragment, they might have gone to America or the Continent to look for some that are still active.  Or even directly to the druids to try something else, who knows?”

            “Or they know that _we’re_ going directly to the Grail, and they’re following us on the down-low,” said Sam.

            “They don’t seem like down-low types of people,” Sharon observed.

            “HYDRA must be used to staying on the down-low,” Nat said.  “Or we wouldn’t have been surprised to find out they exist.  We’ll all have to be very careful when we reach London.  If you see something weird, tell everybody about it, even if you’re _almost_ sure it’s nothing.  Paranoia is survival.”

            “Is that what they taught you at Russian Spy School?” Sam asked.

            “Yes,” said Natasha.

            “Sounds like a hell of a life,” he observed.

            “It is,” said Nat, and it was starting to look like one she would never truly be able to leave behind. 

* * *

 

            Having been raised in the USSR and then worked mostly in the Americas, Natasha was still occasionally startled by just how _small_ the British Isles were.  Driving the length of a country sounded like something that ought to take a long time, but a determined person could make it from Durness to Dover within twenty-four hours.  It had been around ten in the morning when they’d left Barton-in-Fabis, and they reached the suburbs of London before two.

            It took the two time travellers a while to realize they were already in the city, and then, as Nat had predicted, Robin Hood and Sir Stephen were absolutely astonished by this urban landscape.  It really did seem to go on forever in all directions, and even Nat, in her natural habitat here, had to admit it was an astonishing example of humanity’s ability to completely rewrite a landscape.

            “A man could live his whole life within the confines of such a city,” Sir Stephen said quietly, “and never know anything existed beyond its walls.”

            “I think a lot of people _do_ ,” Nat told him.

            Driving _through_ London, where traffic was thick, almost seemed to take longer than driving _to_ it, especially when they got into the city centre near the River Thames.  Natasha started to feel a little shaky when she spotted the outline of the White Tower above the buildings ahead of them.  This was it, then – they were about to find out whether her theory were correct, or whether she’d wasted everybody’s time.  What if she really had invented the whole thing?

            At the time it was built, the Tower keep had been the tallest structure in London, and it had stayed that way for centuries.  It would probably still be impressive to Robin and Sir Stephen if they saw it up close, but for the moment they didn’t even seem to notice it.  Instead, their eyes were drawn past it and up, to something that towered over the old castle by nearly a thousand feet.

            “What is _that_?” asked Sir Stephen.

            “That’s the Shard,” said Sharon.  “It’s the highest building in the United Kingdom.”

            “The Tower of London is coming up on our right,” Nat added.  “The Grail will be hidden somewhere in there.”  She pointed, so that the others could pick the relatively modest building out of downtown Southwark.  Even the Tower Bridge was over a hundred feet taller.  Time had rendered it nearly impossible to imagine how the Tower would have stood out in a Saxon world used to timber buildings and defensive ditches.  William’s ambitions now seemed humble indeed.

            Robin and Sir Stephen didn’t even seem to notice the building – they were still focused on the Shard.  “Do they let people climb it?” Robin asked.  He’d figured out how the windows worked, and now rolled his down so he could stick his head out like a dog for a better look.  “From up there you’d be able to shoot almost anyone in the city!”

            “There’s glass in the windows,” said Sam.

            “Actually, I think they do have an open-air platform at the top,” Sharon said.

            “Even so, they’re not gonna let you take your bow up there,” Nat said, before Robin could get any more ideas.  “But yeah, you can pay admission and go up, like in the Willis Tower in Chicago.”  Not that the name would mean anything to them.

            “Can we do that?” Robin asked eagerly.

            “We’re not here to sightsee,” Sharon told him.  “Get your head back inside – if we go too fast past a stop sign it’s gonna get knocked right off.”

            “Actually…”  Nat glanced up at the building again, then shut off her turn signal and headed for the Tower Bridge instead of turning off to the castle itself.  “He’s right – that’s a good vantage point  If we get some binoculars we can scope out the whole castle grounds without ever setting foot in them.  Zola can’t see or hear what we’re doing in here but if he’s watching us he’ll definitely know where we stop.  This might be a way to keep ahead of him a little longer.”

            From the base of the Shard, looking up, the building looked even more impressive.  The group stood on the sidewalk craning their necks to see if they could make out the top of it, which was almost lost in the low fog.  Nat thought they must look like a bunch of gawking tourists.

            “It looks as if it were built out of air,” said Sir Stephen, taking in the shining steel and glass of the structure.  “I’m not sure I trust it not to fall out from under me.”

            Nat remembered the hospital in Inverness, and shuddered.  “It’s stayed up so far,” she said, hoping his words – and hers – wouldn’t be a jinx.  “Let’s see what we can see.” 

* * *

 

            The observation platform at the top of the skyscraper was creatively called _The View from the Shard_ , and it was a nice airy little place with a hardwood floor and potted plants, and a bar that served snacks and alcohol while people looked out over the city.  The actual view was certainly very nice, with London spread out below them to the horizon on every side.  This was the urban jungle that Natasha had been taught to camouflage herself in, to know its predators and prey and to vanish into its foliage no matter where she was on the planet.  Seeing it from up here made her feel, as Robin had already noted, like a hawk on a perch, ready to swoop down on whatever she liked.

            Sam took up a role as unofficial tour guide for the group, pointing out landmarks like Big Ben, the London Eye, and the replica Globe Theatre.  Nat pretended to be interested in what he was saying, in case of watching eyes or listening ears, but her eyes stayed on the Tower.  As she’d expected, from up here she could see right inside the walls.  The laws and pavements were covered with tourists, wandering around looking at the various sights and historical locations.  When Nat took out a pair of binoculars, she could pick out the Yeomen in their Tudor costumes with the Queen’s initials on the front, and the black specks of the Tower ravens.

            It was the tallest and oldest part of the castle, though, that drew her eyes – the White Tower.  It was currently closed to the public and surrounded by scaffolding while some sort of conservation work went on.  The White Tower was William the Conqueror’s original keep, although it hadn’t gained that name until his successor Henry III had it whitewashed.  It was the strongest and most defensible place in the Tower of London, perfect for hiding something you didn’t want anybody else to get at.  The question was, _where_ in the White Tower would the Grail be?

            Natasha had never been inside the Tower, but she’d looked it up online the previous evening, after telling Allen to go to bed.  The White Tower had four floors, each divided into three rooms.  What had once been the great hall was now the Royal Armory, a museum displaying historical weapons and armor.  Other rooms were now used to store the rest of the armory collection, for employees to take breaks, and for equipment that maintained the air quality and helped preserve the building.  And in the south-east corner of the building was St. John’s Chapel.

            According to the papers Nat had read, the Chapel had not been part of the original building plan – the design had been changed to include it and its semi-circular apse only after the foundations of the White Tower had already been laid.  That had caught her attention, and now as she stood mulling it over from a thousand feet in the air, she was sure she had it right.  William the Conqueror had re-hidden the Holy Grail under the floor of the chapel in his new castle.

            It made sense on multiple levels.  In the Christian worldview of Sir Stephen, or of William himself, the Grail was something evil and demonic.  Placing a consecrated room overtop it and having regular prayers and masses there would provide spiritual energy to keep it under control, almost as if God were literally sitting on it.  It was also a place nobody would dig up in the Middle Ages, because they would have assumed there were tombs under the floor that should not be disturbed.

            In modern times, of course, things were different.  People had a far more secular outlook and old bones had become something to dig up deliberately, to study and test and do reconstructive portraits of, but the Chapel of St. John had survived that, too.  The Tower of London was a Grade I Listed Building as well as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Digging it up was a federal and international crime, and the Chapel was particularly valuable because it preserved its original Norman interior.  It was even still in use, with services said in it on a semi-regular basis.  If there were anywhere in the British Isles where the Grail could have sat quietly for a thousand years undetected, the basement of St. John’s Chapel was the place.

            “Figuring out how to get in?” asked Sharon, coming to look over Nat’s shoulder.  Allen was on her other side, also looking down into the Tower.

            “Getting in will be easy,” said Nat.  “Figuring out where we’re going once we’re inside is the hard part, but I think I’ve got it.”

            “Where is it, exactly?” asked Sharon.

            Natasha shook her head.  “Not here,” she said.  There were people all around them.  The bartender was serving drinks, tourists were chatting to each other or on their phones, and a teenager was taking selfies right next to them.  Any one of these people might be Zola in disguise.  “We’ll get a hotel room, put up some ivy, and then I’ll explain.”

            “Sounds good,” said Sharon.  “Are we doing this tonight?”

            “I hope so,” said Nat.  “Faster is better.  Get it out, and get out of the country.”  She’d been thinking about that, too.  They could stow away in the cargo section of the Chunnel train and bypass customs in France – Nat had one that before in the opposite direction, so she was confident she could do it again.  The trip itself would hopefully give them time to figure out how to _use_ the Grail, and fix some of the problems it had caused.

            She stepped back from the window and looked around.  “Where are the guys?” she asked.  Sam, Sir Stephen, and Robin Hood were no longer with them.

            “I bet Robin dragged them off to go on the Ferris Wheel,” said Allen.  “That seems like it would catch his eye.”

            Nat wouldn’t have been surprised if it were true, but as it turned out they found the others around the other side of the observation deck, where the café and gift shop were located.  Sir Stephen was, unsurprisingly, eating – he had a slice of carrot cake, and in between mouthfuls he was telling a group of schoolchildren about the time his friend Buckeye had tried to woo a girl by shooting an apple down from a tree with an arrow.

            “The apple was not properly ripe,” Sir Stephen explained, “so the arrow went in, but the apple did not fall.  Buckeye was therefore obliged to climb up and retrieve it while the girl and her friends made fun, and worse, on his way up he broke a branch, leaving him unable to climb down again!”

            “Your friend had a weak arm or a lousy bow,” said Robin Hood, who also had a slice of cake.  Sir Stephen was eating with a fork, but Robin was just pulling pieces off his chocolate cake with his fingers and getting them covered with icing, which was why there were also brown smears all over his coffee cup.  “I don’t care if the apple was ripe or not – I could put an arrow through the stem to cut it down, and another through the apple before it hit the ground!”

            “Buckeye was a knight,” sniffed Sir Stephen, “not a common archer.”

            “I’m not a common archer, either,” said Robin.  “I’m the best there is.”

            “A knight on horseback would run you down where you stood,” said Sir Stephen.

            “His horse would be dead under him before he got anywhere near me,” Robin countered.

            “He’s right, you know,” said Natasha.  “At the Battle of Crecy in 1346, English archers completely obliterated the French cavalry.”

            Sir Stephen pretended to be shocked, as if Nat had betrayed him.  “You’d take his side?”

            “It’s not a _side_ ,” said Natasha, recognizing the argument as a joke.  “It’s history.  Come on, guys, we have some shopping to do.”

            The kids who’d been listening waved goodbye, and their teacher smiled at the two men he assumed had been telling made-up stories.  Robin was chuckling as they walked out.

            “Don’t mind him,” he said, nudging Sir Stephen.  “He’s just sore that they’d all heard of me but not of him.”

            “I am not ‘sore’,” Sir Stephen protested.  “I’m only confused why so much attention is paid to a poacher and highwayman.”

            “I’m kind of confused about that myself,” Robin admitted cheerfully, “but they don’t seem to be demanding my head on a pike, so I’ll take it.”

            “It’s all in your point of view,” said Nat, trying to herd them towards the lifts.  “We’re not really into quest stories nowadays – they’re kind of old-fashioned.  Robin Hood was supposed to have liked during the time of King John, who is remembered as incompetent if not outright evil, and the popular legend is that he stole from the rich to give to the poor.  Even if he didn’t, he’s remembered more as a rebel than a criminal, and everybody likes rebels.”

            “Do they?” asked Sir Stephen.  This was completely alien to his worldview, in which the monarch ruled by divine right and any who opposed that were opposing God.

            “You need to watch _Star Wars_ ,” said Sharon, patting Sir Stephen’s back.

            Their next stop was the Millennium Park B&Q, where they bought shovels, picks, crowbars, and tarpaulins, along with a couple more potted ivy plants.  The clerk who rang them through and packed it all up for them asked what sort of gardening they were planning on doing.

            “No gardening,” said Nat.  “Archaeology.”

            “Yeah?”  The clerk smiled.  “What kind?”

            “We’re going to dig up a Norman chapel,” said Nat.  “It’ll be one for the history books.”

            “I’ll look forward to seeing you on _Time Team_ , then,” said the clerk.

            Nat thought he was more likely to see them on _Crimes that Shook Britain_ , but she just paid the bill, and they moved on to a room in a Safestay hostel.  There, they put up ivy and horseshoes to keep unwanted ears from listening, and Nat pulled up the Google satellite map of the Tower grounds.

            “You can’t see it from the bird’s eye view, of course,” she said, “but while we were driving past I noticed that the walkway beside the A400 is at almost the same height as the outer curtain wall.”  She pointed it out.  “That’s also one of the narrowest points in the moat besides the ones that border on the Thames.  Nobody will have a good view of what we’re doing, so we can climb up to the Develin Tower, then along the top of the wall to the workshops, where the inner wall is only a few yards away.  Drop to the ground between the workshops and the hospital block, and the chapel is just around the corner.”

            “How do we get into the actual building?” asked Sharon.

            “Through the door, I’m assuming,” said Nat.  “I mean, it’s a medieval castle, there’s not gonna be ducts we can crawl through.  The good news is that the keep is closed to the public for restoration work.  The contractors are gonna need to be able to get in and out, probably during hours when they’re not open, so they’ll have one of those keypads on the door.  I can figure that out, no problem.”  It was a little funny, actually, how high tech modern security was so easy for her to break, while the walls of a thousand-year-old castle remained as impenetrable as they’d always been.

            “The only obstacle,” she went on, “is that there’ll be guards around, and I’m sure the night guards will be much more practically dressed and lethally armed than the daytime ones.  Somebody will have to stay outside the walls at a vantage point while the rest of us go in, so they can warn us if anyone’s coming.”  She looked up at Allen, who was standing behind her to see the map over her shoulder.  “That’s gonna be your job.”

            “Me?” he asked in surprise.

            “Yeah.”  Nat nodded.  “We’ll put you up on one of the bridge towers with my binoculars, where you’ll have a view of everything going on down in the grounds.  If anything happens, you text me.  We’ll need to know if somebody’s seen us.”

            “How will I know?” asked Allen.  “It could just be the contractors, or the guard changing or something.”

            “Then you’ll have to inform us of any of those things,” said Nat.  “We’re gonna be in the basement, don’t forget.  We’ll need to have eyes outside.”

            Allen set his jaw.  “All right,” he said, determined not to let them down this time.  Nat felt rather pleased with herself for having found him a job he could do that would actually be helpful but still within his comfort zone.

            “As for the rest of us,” Nat added, “the most important thing _has_ to be getting the job _done_.  Everything else is secondary.  No matter what happens, we _have_ to walk out of there _with_ the Grail so that we can get rid of it.”

            “After I get my memories back,” Robin said.

            “Right,” agreed Nat, although she was still having doubts about that.  “Of course.  What that means, though, is that if somebody gets hurt, the rest of us have to carry on.  If somebody gets arrested, or even killed, the rest of us have to carry on.  We aren’t going to get a chance to come back and try again tomorrow night.  I’m sure they inspect this place, basement and all, very thoroughly, and if they realize we were in there they’ll step up the guard.  Or worse, they’ll dig deeper to figure out what we were looking for.  Do you all understand?”

            They nodded, but she wasn’t sure they really _did_ get it.  All of them except for Allen had some kind of combat training, but it wasn’t like Natasha’s own.  Her companions lived in a world where lives could still be more important than missions, and this was a time when they couldn’t think that way.  Not if the alternative was the Red Death and a bunch of Neo-Nazis getting the Grail.  This was a mission almost _meant_ for somebody like a Black Widow.  Maybe, in the fantasy-stained world they found themselves in, it was Nat’s destiny as much as it was Sir Stephen’s.


	19. Beneath the Chapel Floor

            Shortly after midnight, the group packed up their equipment to look as if they were backpackers, and set out for the Tower.  They took a couple of taxis to Southwark, but had those drop them off at Jubilee Gardens so the drivers wouldn’t be able to say they’d taken anyone to the Tower.  From there it was a forty-minute walk to the Tower Bridge, but they made it in respectable anonymity.  People in London were used to tourists and travellers, and nobody took them for anything else.

            They crossed the Bridge, stopping at the North Tower where the visitor’s entrance was.  This was closed for the evening, but Nat slipped around to the opposite side, where there was an employee entrance and access to the hydraulic machinery that raised and lowered the bridge deck.  There she picked the lock, and waved to Allen to join her.  Together, they climbed the flights of stairs that led up to the observation deck.

            “You said if you guys get caught, you just carry on,” Allen said.  “What happens if _I_ get caught?”

            “Pretend you were in the washroom or something when the place shut down, and you’ve been waiting for somebody to find you,” Nat suggested.

            “Then they’ll throw me out,” he said.  “What does that mean for you guys?”

            “It means we carry on as best we can,” Nat told him.  “Like I said, the most important thing is getting the Grail out.  If anything happens to you, text me, and then go back to the hostel and wait for us.  We’ll come back for you if we can, and if we can’t, I’ll try to find an opportunity to let you know.”

            They reached the top, and Nat picked another lock to get them into the visitors’ area.  The overhead walkways contained exhibits on the history of London and the construction and workings of the bridge.  Interior lights had been turned off for the night, but the exterior ones were shining brightly, providing more than enough illumination for Nat to disarm and emergency exit and get them out to the exterior catwalk.

            “It’s cold out here!” Allen protested.

            “Yes, but if you’re indoors, you’ll have glare off the windows blocking your view, and fewer options to change position if you need a different angle,” Nat pointed out.  She found a place with a good view of the Tower grounds, and waved him over.  “If you need to hide, you can crouch in one of the shadowy spots around the stonework,” she said.  “If a guard comes along, pretend you got locked out.”

            Allen nodded.  He hung the binoculars she’d given him around his neck, and checked the buckle with shaking hands.

            “Are you okay?” asked Nat.

            “Yeah,” he aid uncertainly.  “Yeah, uh… you said you’d come back for me if you can.  What are the odds of that, do you think?  Even if you do find the Grail, you might not be able to stop for me.”

            That was true – she didn’t want to leave him stranded.  “Let me give you a credit card number,” Natasha said.  She opened her wallet to fish out the card she’d written it down on, but Allen reached out and caught her wrist to stop her.  She looked up at him, puzzled.

            “What?” she asked.

            “Can I be a silly old man for a moment?” he asked.

            “Uh… yes?” said Nat, unsure what he meant.

            He pulled her in and hugged her.

            Natasha couldn’t ever remember having a hug like the one he gave her now.  Sharon had hugged her on Flotta, but that had been gentle sympathy.  Allen clung to her as if he feared somebody were about to come and drag her out of his arms, as if she were the most precious thing he could possibly imagine.  Nobody had ever loved Nat enough to hold her like that.  Sometimes she doubted anybody had ever loved her at all.  Even now, Allen Jones only loved her because of a lie she’d once told.

            But this was what he needed right now – some semblance of the daughter he’d come to see.  She let her purse drop and put her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder.  It was for him, she told herself, to get his courage up.  Not for herself.

            “I love you, Ginger Snap,” he murmured.

            Nat swallowed hard.  “I love you, too, Dad,” she said, because that was what he needed to hear.

            “Have fun storming the castle,” he said, without letting go.

            Fortunately, she knew how to reply to that.  “You think it’ll work?”

            “It’d take a miracle,” said Allen, and kissed her cheek.

            Natasha kept her head down as they finally parted, and didn’t look back as she went back inside to descend to street level.  What she’d just done had doubtless made Allen Jones feel better, but Nat was already regretting it, and she didn’t even know why.  It couldn’t just be that she’d lied to him, because he knew perfectly well that she was lying.  He’d asked for an indulgence, something to make him feel a little better about the lonely vigil ahead of him, and she’d given it.  Surely _that_ wasn’t a moral problem, and even if it were, the fact that they were _saving the world_ ought to placate Natasha’s misdirected conscience.

            Maybe it was the fear that after they came back for him – assuming they could – he might expect her to continue the charade.  Maybe it was the fear that they wouldn’t be _able_ to come back for him, and the last thing she’d ever said to him would be a lie.  Maybe it was just that she didn’t actually want or need a father.

            What she knew for sure was that she couldn’t allow it to prey on her mind right now.  She had to _focus_.  That was a good alternative way of dealing with ugly truths – you could always just ignore them.

            “Everybody ready?” she asked, when she re-joined the others at the bottom.

            There were general sounds of agreement, so they got to work.

            Below the Tower Bridge, they scaled the outer wall of the castle.  Even this late at night there was vehicle and foot traffic on the streets of London, but the gap between the highway and the building was small enough to hide them, and they climbed unseen to the crenellated top of the Develin Tower.  From there they crossed to the roof of the Workshops as planned, and crouched there to take stock of the next set of obstacles.

            Directly below them was a cobblestone street in front of the buildings, and beyond that a narrow lawn, where the ruins of the Wardrobe Tower and the foundations of the Roman Wall of Londinium were still visible.  The grounds were also home to a strange art exhibit – life-sized sculptures of animals, made out of layers and layers of chicken wire, had been arranged all over the courtyard.  Most of these were ordinary creatures such as bears, lions, and a gorilla, but there was also a sabre-toothed tiger and a beautifully sinuous Chinese dragon.

            In the middle was the White Tower, with the Chapel apse almost directly in front of them.  They couldn’t go in that way, though – the entrance was around the other side of the building, and as Natasha had anticipated, the place was well-guarded at night.  The decorative Yeomen were gone, and in there place were proper armed security guards in bullet-proof vests.  Nat counted them as they made their rounds, then nodded to Robin Hood.

            He stood up, fitted an arrow to his bow, and released it with a soft _thwock_ of recoiling wood and a whistle of wind over the fletching.  For a moment Nat was sure he’d aimed too high, but then gravity took over, and the missile’s arching path took it right through a window in the Royal Mint on the far side of the Tower complex.  An alarm began to blare.

            The guards responded immediately, some taking up cover positions while others ran to investigate the disturbance.  Nat hadn’t been able to shoot first on Flotta because the sound would have given away their position, but they didn’t have that problem now.  Arrows were all but silent.

            _Bullseye_ , she mouthed, giving Robin a thumbs-up.

            “I told you, I’m the best,” he whispered back.

            In Nat’s pocket, her phone vibrated.  Allen was letting her know he could see activity.  Good – that meant they could count on him to watch.

            One of the guards, a woman with a dark ponytail, took up a position almost directly beneath their hiding place.  She had a gun in her hands.  Robin nocked another arrow, but Nat held up a hand to stop him, and somersaulted down to land like a cat, directly behind the guard.  Before the other woman knew what was happening, Nat had a hand over her mouth and took the gun from her, then hit her behind the ear with the handle.  She’d knocked Robin Hood out the other day because she’d hit him where she hadn’t meant to.  Now she hit the guard _exactly_ where she meant to, and lowered her unconscious body gently to the cobbles.

            Nat motioned to the others, and they dropped a rope and slid down it one by one.  Together, they scurried across the street to hide among the ruins of the Wardrobe Tower, where they crouched while another guard passed by.  This one noticed his fallen colleague and ran to check on her.  Finding her unconscious, he called for help.

            Crouching among the chicken-wire lions and in the shadow of the apse, the group of intruders went unnoticed while three guards held a brief conversation and then split up and spread out to look around.  Now was time for another distraction.  Nat signaled to Robin, who quickly stood up, loosed and arrow, and squatted down again in one smooth, swift motion that required only a second or two.  Again, the arrow arced up before coming back down, using gravity to accelerate it through a window in the corner of the Waterloo Block.  Another alarm began to ring, and the guards changed their plans at once.  The man who’d found the unconscious one dragged her into the Workshop building, while the other two ran for the location of the alarm.

            The Jewel House was in the Waterloo Block.  The guards thought somebody was trying to deal the Crown Jewels.

            With all the attention now focused there, Natasha and the rest slipped around the other side of the building, to where a flight of modern metal stairs led up the original entrance at the second storey level.  Sure enough, there was a contractor’s lock on the door.  Nat opened that easily, and got out the key.  Once they were inside, a security system beeped to let the know they had only a few seconds to deactivate it before it summoned the police.  Nat deftly took it apart and shut it down, with time to spare.

            “You know, even if we hadn’t already committed thirty-one crimes this week, after seeing you do that I might have to arrest you on general principle,” Sharon observed.

            “I’d like to see the jail cell that could hold me,” Nat replied.

            “Good point,” Sharon nodded.

            “Thirty-one?” Sam asked.  “That’s very specific.”

            “I’ve been counting,” said Sharon.

            Nat closed the door behind them and let it lock.  When the guards realized there was nobody in the Jewel House and resumed searching the grounds, they probably wouldn’t notice it had ever been opened.  Even if they did, they would need to unlock it themselves to search the building, and now there was one less easily available key.

            The main hall of the White Tower was where the Royal Armories were, a museum displaying medieval and modern weapons and armor.  Much of this had been moved to other parts of the Tower so that people could still visit it during the restoration work, but other objects had been left behind, in their display cases or with cloth draped over them.  Everybody passed those by and went down the stairs to the basement.

            There were no lights on here, so NAT turned on her LED flashlight and looked around.  When the Tower was open, this part displayed instruments of torture, but now these macabre displays, too, were packed away and covered with drop cloths.  The walls were stone and mortal with no plaster on them, probably not so much because it was historically accurate than simply to enhance the impression of being in a dungeon.  The ceilings were barrel-vaulted to take the weight of the masonry above.  After several weeks without visitors, a layer of dust had accumulated on the horizontal surfaces.

            At the end of the small hall was the basement of the chapel.  This had the same shape as the room above it – a long rectangle with a semi-circle apse at one end.  There was only one tiny window high in the far wall, but that let in a surprisingly bright beam of light from a lamp just outside it.  The floor was simple stone tile, uncovered by early restoration work during the eighteenth century.  Thank heavens they hadn’t dug any deeper.

            The archaeologist in Nat was absolutely appalled by what she was now thinking.  That stone floor had been there for a thousand years.  Digging it up would be like walking into the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and setting fire to the portrait of Catherine the Great.  Was Natasha, who’d chosen a profession dedicated to preserving and learning from the past, really going to be the one who did this terrible thing?

            Yes, she was.  _Somebody_ had to.

            Sam took off his backpack and unzipped it to start taking out tools.  “Where do we dig first?” he asked.

            “Directly under the altar, I think,” said Nat.  That would be the most holy place in the chapel.  “But put the wards up first, the horseshoes and ivy.  You guys do that, I’ve got to do this.”  She got a digital camera out of her bag, turned the flash off and the shutter speed way down, and began taking pictures.

            “What are you doing?” asked Robin, measuring out lengths of ivy.

            “I am documenting the initial condition of the site,” Nat replied.  “Because I’m a god-damned archaeologist.”

            There were a lot of doors and windows in the White Tower, and it would have been impractical to try to ward every single one.  Fortunately, the chapel basement only had two – the single entrance and the tiny window.  While Nat took her pictures, the others put up horseshoes and wreathed both apertures with ivy leaves.  Nat’s phone buzzed as Allen kept them updated, and she pulled it out to look at his last few texts.

            “He says an ambulance has arrived for the guard I knocked out,” she said, “and the cops have come.  We’d better get to work.”

            Nat put her camera away, and chose the stone tile right at the focus of the apse – that would be directly beneath the altar on the upper level.  Everybody else waited while she got out a crowbar and worked the end of it under a chipped corner.  She didn’t know why, and she suspected that none of the others did either, but it seemed important somehow that _Nat_ be the one who did the first damage.  Maybe it was just because she was supposed to be the professional.  For a moment she still couldn’t bring herself to do it, but then she gritted her teeth, summoned up her courage, and pried.

            It didn’t move at first  Even after a thousand years, the mortal holding the tiles in place was solid, and after a couple of tries Nat gave up on getting the piece out whole and just hit it with the curved end of the crowbar.  The tile broke, and she was able to pull the pieces up individual, with the mortar still clinging to them.

            “Right,” she said.  “No going back now.”

            The rest of them joined her, taking up the tiles one by one and piling them on top of a tarpaulin so the mess could be easily cleaned up.  Under the stone tiles was an older terracotta layer, and beneath that they started finding bluish basalt.

            There was a brief pause in the work when Allen texted again to warn them that the cops were searching for intruders, and appeared to have found one of Robin’s arrows.  Shovels and picks had to be set down while everybody stood silent in corners out of view of the window, watching shadows pass across the beam of light on the floor.  After about twenty minutes during which Nat was _sure_ somebody was going to come bursting into the room at any moment, her phone buzzed again.  The cops were re-grouping outside the Waterloo Block.  Perhaps they’d decided the whole thing was a prank

            With the danger of discovery past, the group got back to work again.

            “Question,” said Sam, stacking terracotta tiles – some of these were decorated with engraved designs, and Natasha had laid down the law that no more of them were to be broken if they could possibly help it.  “What do we think this thing _looks_ like?  I’m pretty sure we’re all picturing something like the sparkly cup from _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_ , but the nuns told Sir Steve it wasn’t a cup, and the Red Death said it was a drop of the blood of Odin or something.”

            Nat looked at Sir Stephen, who seemed as if he’d be the most likely to know, but he didn’t have an answer for them.  “I was given no description of it,” he said.  “The Prioress suggested I would know it when I saw it, for it could be nothing but what it is.”

            “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” said Sharon.  She was chipping at the edge of the layer of mortar as if it were ice on the driveway.  “I’m pretty sure it’s a gem.  Probably not cut, because I don’t think they did that back then, and it’ll have bits knocked off where they put them inside those crosses.  According to Wikipedia the Grail is sometimes described as a stone, and a big ruby or something could be poetically called a drop of crystallized blood, or Odin’s gouged-out eye.”

            “I was imagining a cup of glowing red liquid, myself,” said Nat, “but yeah, that sounds about right.”  She honestly hadn’t thought seriously about what the Grail might _look_ like.  Like Sir Stephen, she’d assumed they would recognize it when they found it.

            The moment was now closing in.  As they cleared away more of the layers on top of it, it began to look as if the deepest layer of chapel floor was made of a single huge slab of dolerite.  Exactly what this was and what it was doing here did not become clear until they found the apse end, which was not nice and straight like a block of dressed building stone ought to be, but sharply angled, like a shard of glass.  The image of a body impaled on such a stone flashed before Nat’s eyes, and she had a revelation.

            “It’s one of the missing stones from Kracness Henge!” she exclaimed.

            “I think you’re right,” said Sam thoughtfully.  “It’s the right shape and size.  Why would they use that, though?”

            “Probably because they figured it was somehow sacred even if they weren’t sure how,” said Nat.  “People in Britain have been re-using each other’s archaeology for a very long time.  William the Conqueror probably figured it was already protecting the Grail somehow, and he didn’t want to taken any chances.”

            “He may also have thought it would render the circle useless to any who might come after him,” suggested Sir Stephen.  “Remember how the Red Death’s followers replaced the missing stones.”

            “I wonder how much it _weighs_ ,” said Sam.

            That was a good question.  Another reason for using this stone, Nat thought, would simply be because it was very heavy and therefore very difficult for any would-be thief to move.  Maybe William the Conqueror, who’d always come across as a very practical man, hadn’t thought of anything beyond that.  “Let’s find the rest of the edges,” she said.  “Then we can estimate.”

            The sky outside was getting worryingly pink as they worked their way down the slab, and at the end nearest the door they found something else – a piece of dense, dark-coloured sandstone with some text carved into it.  Luckily, the mortar had not adhered to this very well, and they could pry almost all of it away in one big chunk, leaving the inscription clear for Nat to read.  She brushed grit out of the O’s, and grinned as she realized that the writing on it was Norman French.  Obviously it was, she decided, because this was a part of the story that Natasha herself had made up, not somebody who thought people in the eleventh century had talked like Hamlet.

            “It says, _William, son of Robert, caused this stone to be set in place in the year of our Lord 1079_ ,” she read, running a finger along the line.  “ _Only by the blood of a living saint can the chamber below be opened, because only a living saint do I trust with what lies beneath._ ”

            “Don’t you have to be dead to be a saint?” asked Sharon.

            “Usually,” said Nat.  She stood up and brushed her hands off on her trousers.  “Sir Steve?  Come here.”

            Sir Stephen looked surprised.  “I am no saint!” he protested.

            “Actually, you were informally considered one for a very long time,” said Nat.  “There was a guy just last year who thought he’d found a chapel dedicated to you on the Isle of Man, but I wrote a paper in which I argued that the star in the altar painting actually represented Saint Dominic, because _your_ star always appeared on a shield.”  She gestured to the stone.  “Just humour me.  Let’s see if we ca get our miracle.”

            With a dubious expression on his face, Sir Stephen pulled out one of the knives he carried and, without so much as a flinch, cut his arm with the blade.  Blood smeared on the shining metal.  Nat expected him to hold out his arm and let the blood drip on the floor, the way characters did in movies, but instead Sir Stephen got down on one knee and thrust the knife into the slab.

            It should have stopped with the tip blunted, because the ground was stone and the knife mere steel.  Instead, it went in right to the hilt.  The phrase _like a knife through butter_ , cliché as it was, was the only thing that came to mind.

            The slab didn’t _behave_ like butter, though.  Instead of letting Sir Stephen cut it, it began to glow around where the knife had entered, and then to curl and blacken like burning paper.  Sir Stephen stopped his knife into the growing hole and scurried backwards.  The others followed his lead, crowding back into the apse as the entire stone slowly burned away.  A number of tiles around it also crumbled and fell in, until nearly the entire floor was gone, and the chapel basement filled with the dull red glow of what had been revealed beneath it.

            It was safe to say that this was not what anyone had expected.  It was not Sam’s jewelled chalice, nor Nat’s cup of red glitter, nor even Sharon’s uncut ruby.  Worse, it wasn’t something they could possibly carry out in a sports bag, or put in an old Soviet rocket and shoot into space.

            The cavity they’d revealed was about twelve feet long and eight feet deep, and as wide as the entire room.  Filling almost this entire space were two giant slabs of what looked like haematite ore, with its metallic sheen and slightly bubbly surface texture.  These were arranged one on top of the other like a layer cake, and the upper surface was carved with snaking liens of symbols that resembled Futhark runes or Anglo-Saxon letters, but far more complicated, as if they were also a form of hieroglyphics.  Natasha couldn’t read it, and suspected there was nobody alive on Earth who could.

            Rather than sitting directly on top, as gravity might be expected to dictate, the upper slab was floating about three inches above its partner, and in between them was… Nat didn’t know _what_ it was, and could barely find words to describe it.  A glistening fluid that somehow glowed red, like coals in a furnace or bricks in a kiln, despite its inky black surface.  It would seep or bubble a little way out of the gap and then recoil back into it, as if it were trying to escape confinement but could not do so.  Nat could definitely understand how this had been interpreted as _sang real_ – the blood of a god.

            Now they had a problem, because they weren’t going to be able to _move_ this thing, let alone use or dispose of it  William the Conqueror probably had the right idea all along by simply _hiding_ it, but now they’d exposed it for all the world to see, and had neither the time nor the means to cover it up again.

            Eye contact was made and broken between several members of the group as everybody looked to see if any of the others had any ideas.  Nobody did.  With most of the floor gone and what was left not looking very stable, they couldn’t even leave the room themselves, much less take this enormous thing with them.

            “You didn’t know what you were going to do when you found it,” Natasha said to Sir Stephen.  Maybe he had some idea now.

            But he shook his head.  “I hadn’t any idea it would be so _big_ ,” he said, without taking his eyes off the strange object in the pit.  It was as if he were afraid if he looked away, it would attack him.

            Nat’s phone vibrated again.  She took it out to look at Allen’s message: _it’s almost dawn, kids?  Are you finished yet?_   What could she possibly say in reply.

            Then they heard the shout from outside, audible through the basement’s little window.  “In there!  Under the chapel!”

            Nat went stiff.  They’d been discovered, and that meant they had to do something, but there was nothing they could do.  They couldn’t leave the Grail just sitting there, but even if they could, they were trapped on the little half-moon of remaining floor in the apse  The pit spanned from wall to wall, and the vaulted ceiling had no rafters for them to cling to or climb across.  The only obvious way across would be to jump onto the upper Grail block and walk across that, but nobody wanted to try.  It didn’t look like something safe to touch.

            Sir Stephen lifted his shield and pulled out his other knife.  Sharon drew her revolver.  Nat had the gun she’d taken from the security guard, and Sam gripped a crowbar in both hands, prepared to use it as a club if he had to.  Robin Hood had an arrow on his bowstring.

            Footsteps echoed in the empty stone building, making it difficult to tell how many people were coming – especially when they were all but drowned out by the thumping of Natasha’s heart in her ears.  It turned out to be three security guards and an elderly Yeoman who must have arrived early to work that morning, already dressed in his ridiculous Elizabethan uniform.  He hung back in the doorway while the guards rushed in, then stopped dead when they saw what was in front of them.

            For the first few seconds it was clear that none of the three even knew where to look.  Five armed people, a giant hole in the floor, and this bizarre and inexplicable object in the hole, bubbling ominously away… which of these was the greatest threat?  He guards – a middle-aged white man with a shaved head, a younger man with shaggy brown hair and freckles, and a muscular black woman with her hair in a tight bun – were so surprised and confused they didn’t even draw their guns.

            Finally, the older man’s brain seemed to catch up with the situation.  He belatedly pulled out his weapon and asked the reasonable question.

            “What’s all this, then?” he demanded.  He didn’t sound angry or intimidating, and probably wasn’t even trying to.  He was scared and confused, and desperately hoping one of these people in the apse would have some kind of explanation.

            “The Holy Grail,” Natasha replied calmly, because she figured this man was equally likely to believe just about anything she might tell him.  She might as well tell the truth.

            The three guards glanced nervously down into the hole again, while the Yeoman loitered just outside the doorway, checking his watch as if wondering whether this would interfere with his work schedule for the day.  Nat wondered if they thought the Grail were likely to reach up and grab them.

            “And who are you?” the bald guard asked.

            Nat looked over her shoulder at her companions for a moment.  She could only think of one answer that would be both reasonably true and acceptably short.

            “Archaeologists,” she said.


	20. Jurisdiction

            According to the embroidery on his pocket, the head security guard’s name was Martinson.  He considered Natasha’s answer for a moment, then shrugged as he evidently decided that, given the circumstances, ‘archaeologists’ actually made sense.  He glanced back at his two companions to see if either of them had anything to add.  Neither did.

            “Um.”  Martinson licked his lips, then stood up a little straighter as he tried, belatedly, to look like an authority figure.  “Are you aware that the White Tower is a Grade One Listed Building?” he asked.

            “Yes,” said Nat.  “This seemed kind of important, though.  There’s other people looking for it and we didn’t think we could afford to wait for the paperwork to go through.”

            “What people?” asked Martinson.

            “Bad people,” said Nat, who figured it was best to keep things simple.

            “Enemies of England,” said Sir Stephen.

            “Probably _all_ voted pro-Brexit,” Sam agreed.

            That just made poor Martinson look more confused than ever.  This was not a situation he’d ever even _imagined_ dealing with, and he had no idea how to even begin doing so.  Somebody, Nat thought, needed to sit this guy down and make him watch an _Indiana Jones_ movie.

            At least the danger of him trying to shoot them seemed to have passed, and one by one, members of Nat’s own group started lowering their weapons.  Stances remained guarded, though, just in case the security people changed their minds.

            “Who, uh… who looks after things like this?” Martinson asked his colleagues.

            “Historic England, I guess,” the woman offered.

            “Uh-huh.”  The expression on Martinson’s face suggested he thought this was _way_ beyond anything the DCMS was prepared to cope with.  “Okay, look,” he said to Nat.  “You digging in here was obviously very illegal and I’m gonna have to do something about that, but you’ll have to give me a minute.”  He checked the pit again, as if hoping the Grail would have vanished.  It had not.  “We need to call somebody,” he decided, “and I have no idea who to call.”

            “Ghostbusters?” the younger man said, only half-joking.

            “the Queen, perhaps?” Sir Stephen suggested.

            Martinson looked at him as if he’d just suggested calling for Martians.  “The _Queen_?”

            “Yes,” Sir Stephen said impatiently.  “She doesn’t seem to have any authority over anything else, so she may as well have authority over this, don’t you think?”

            A few more seconds passed as Martinson tried to figure out if that were a joke.  He must have decided it was not, because he looked over his shoulder and tried the idea on the other two.  “The Queen?”

            “I’ve only worked here a fortnight,” said the woman.

            The younger mans shrugged.  “That’s…” he began, but stopped there and shrugged again.

            With a slow nod, Martinson holstered his gun.  “Okay.  Um.  The Queen,” he said.  “Letty, you come with me, and Matt, you stay here with… what’s your name again?” he asked the Yeoman.

            The Yeoman still hadn’t followed them into the room.  He was leaning idly on the wall just outside the doorway, looking for all the world like he’d fallen asleep, and did not answer the question.

            “Hello!” Martinson called to him, but when the man still didn’t answer, he gave up.  “Fine.  Matt, stay here and keep an eye on them.  And on that… thing.”  He glanced nervously at the grail again.  “Letty and I are gonna… are gonna go get the Queen.  Or something.”

            As Martinson and Letty passed him on the way out, the Yeoman seemed to wake up.  He yawned, then peered into the room as if he’d forgotten his glasses and couldn’t quite make out what was going on inside.  “You didn’t arrest them?” he asked.

            “Just watch them,” said Martinson.  “I don’t think they’re _going_ anywhere, but you never know.  We’ll be right back.”

            Once he and the woman had vanished around the corner, that left Nat and the others with only two guards.  Had she any way of getting across the Grail pit, Nat could have overpowered both of them easily.  Matt the guard didn’t know what Natasha was capable of, but he did know as much as she did that she was trapped, so he didn’t see the point of staying on his feet.  He sat down cross-legged in the middle of the small remaining patch of floor at the other end of the room, and got out his mobile phone.  The Yeoman, meanwhile, slumped against the wall and shut his eyes again.

            Nat frowned suspiciously.  The Yeoman seemed to be taking surprisingly little interest in the odd events in the room.  “Hey!” she called out.  “You!  In the stupid hat!”

            There was no reaction at all.  Either this man could fall asleep in an instant, or he couldn’t see or hear them past the stems of ivy they’d sellotaped around the door.

            Matt glanced up to see if the Yeoman had reacted, and noticed something.  “What’s with the horseshoe?”

            “Keeps the fairies out,” said Nat.  She caught Sharon’s eye, and pointed to the Yeoman.  Sharon nodded, and took out the bottle of iron filings they’d bought from the shop in Inverness.  She handed it to Nat, and Nat tossed it to the security guard.  “Catch!” she said.

            He caught it, then held it up to look at.  “What’s this for?”

            “Sprinkle a bit on our friend over there,” said Nat, pointing to the Yeoman.

            “Is this… what is it?”  Matt shook some out on his palm.

            “Iron.  Toxic to the Fair Folk,” said Nat, as if she knew what she were talking about.

            More out of curiosity than anything else, Matt got up and reached through the ivy-wreathed doorway to pat the Yeoman on the shoulder with his iron-dusted hand.  “Hey, you – wake up,” he said.

            The Yeoman _screamed_.  He grabbed at his shoulder with both hands, startling Matt, who staggered backwards, slipped, and fell on his backside just inches short of the Grail pit.  There he sat, dumbfounded, while the Yeoman shrank in stature and transformed back into Zola, who sputtered and shook as he tried to get the dust off his clothing.  His face was red and swollen, as if from an allergic reaction, or perhaps simply from rage.

            “You think you’re clever!” he shouted, so furious he was nearly spitting.  “You can’t keep it now!  You don’t even know how to use it!”  With that, he vanished from sight, leaving behind motes of iron dust that fluttered to the ground.

            Matt the guard was visibly trembling as he got up again.  His hand went for his gun, but then he stopped and raised it to comb through his hair instead.  “Stupid, _stupid_ ,” he muttered.

            “I don’t think you could have shot him, anyway,” said Nat, in case that were any comfort.  “These guys don’t really do the whole ‘laws of physics’ thing.”  It was slightly worrying, really, how comfortable she was becoming with that.

            “How did he know we’d found it?” asked Sharon.

            That was a good question.  Zola couldn’t have followed them into the chapel basement because of the horseshoes over the window and door, and couldn’t have watched them because of the ivy.  Had they missed something?

            “When he came and found us, he pointed out that something in here was glowing red,” Matt said.

            Nat looked up at the little window.  The Grail did indeed glow red, and that light was not trapped in the room – it tinted the stones around the window as well, outside the ring of ivy, and spilled onto the lawn beyond.  Zola couldn’t see _in_ , but he could still see the light that escaped.  There was a loophole.

            “Well, crap,” sighed Nat.  “We should have thought of that.”  All it would have taken was some dark plastic over the window.  A garbage bag would have done it.

            She put down the gun she’d been holding and sat, which reminded her that her phone was in the back pocket of her jeans.  When she pulled it out, she found a series of missed texts from Allen.  He’d seen the guards converging on the White Tower and had tried to warn them, but she’d been so caught up in staring at the Grail and wondering what to do with it, she hadn’t even felt the vibration.

            _The guards are coming.  One of the yeomen warned them_ , was the first text.

            _They broke the lock, I think_ , was the second.

            _Are you okay?_ asked the third.

            _Are you getting these?_ was the fourth.

            _Natalie, please answer_ , was number five.

            “What are you doing?” Matt asked, as Nat held up her phone to take a picture of the Grail pit.  She wouldn’t have been surprised if the contents didn’t show up in the image at all, but they did, looking exactly as she saw them with her eyes.

            “Instagram,” she replied.  She sent the picture to Allen, along with two short messages.

            _We’re fine.  We found it.  You can come down now._

_I think we’re gonna meet the Queen_.

            Natasha didn’t know if the Queen would actually be any _help_ , but she was pretty sure it would be a while before they found out.  The Queen of England wasn’t somebody you could drag out of bed in her pajamas.  Even if she didn’t think Martinson and Letty were just crazy, her Majesty would want to look nice before she went out in public, in case she were recognized and photographed.  It was nerve-wracking when they were in a hurry, but it also provided some quiet time in which Nat could keep texting Allen.  He’d managed to lock himself out of the bridge tower, and needed her to talk him through picking the lock.  That done he kept them updated on his progress as he made his way down to the castle, and then the phone rang as he called.

            “What’s wrong?” asked Nat, without a greeting.  They were technically already in the middle of their conversation.

            “I’m at the front gate and they won’t let me in,” said Allen.  “Can you tell them where you are, Ginger Snap?”

            _Ginger Snap_.  Damn it, Nat thought, she should never have let him have that moment, no matter how good it had seemed to be for him.  He was going to think they were okay with the whole father and daughter thing now when they _weren’t_ , because he still wasn’t _real_.  “I have a better idea,” she said, and called to the security guard.  “Matt!  Can you ring your friends at the gate and ask them to let my father in?”

            “Your father’s here?” he asked, in the voice of a man who will never be surprised by anything, ever again.

            “Sort of.  It’s a long story,” Nat sighed.  “He was our lookout up on the Tower Bridge.”

            Matt closed whatever game he’d been playing, and Nat put her phone back to her ear.  “Hello?”

            She heard shouting in the background, and a car horn honked.  “Sorry, I’ll call back,” Allen promised, and then disconnected.  A moment later, Matt’s phone rang.

            Nat got to her feet and went to look out the little window, but all she could see was the row of trees in front of the workshops, with the eastern sky brightening beyond them.  What was going on out there?  Had the Red Death come for them already?  If he and Zola could teleport, they could probably still get into the White Tower, even if not into this particular room.  How many guards were there _upstairs_ , and could any of them actually do anything if confronted with a sorcerer and a shapeshifting goblin?

            Five minutes later, she had her answer.  Matt the security guard got up and stood at attention as the sound of many footsteps suggested a sizeable group of people approaching – at least eight – and Nat began to be able to hear a voice.

            “… supposed to be boarding a plane for Monte Carlo right now,” it was saying – it sounded like an elderly woman.  “There’s a slot machine with my name on it.  Literally.  My picture, too.  This had best be worth it!”

            When the group reached the doorway, there turned out to be about a dozen of them.  Half were security guards, followed by three or four hulking bodyguards in Ray-Bans and nicely tailored suits, and bringing up the rear were two people in relatively ordinary clothing.  One was Allen Jones in his blue plaid shirt and jeans, looking frazzled and sleepless but otherwise all right.  The other was a little old lady in a bubblegum-pink skirt suit and a matching hat with magenta and white cloth orchids on it.  She was wearing enormous diamond earrings and carrying a little clutch with a jeweled clasp and she looked, to put it mildly, very put-out.

            This woman pushed her way to the front of the group, and Matt got out of the way so she could see the Grail pit.  For a moment she peered nearsightedly into it, then her eyes went wide.

            “Bloody fucking hell,” she declared.

            After a moment’s more staring into the pit, she turned her attention to the people who’d uncovered it.

“What the devil is going on?” she demanded.

            Everybody else remained standing, but Sir Stephen laid his sword on the ground and held his shield at his side as he took a knee.  “Your Majesty,” he said, inclining his head respectfully.  “Behold the Holy Grail.”

            “I’m beholding it,” said the Queen.  “How’d it get here?”

            “William the Conqueror hid it here,” Natasha explained.  “It was originally in Scotland.  We don’t really know what it is or where it came from.”  Her mind flashed back to those ridiculous conspiracy websites claiming it had come from outer space… that didn’t seem so unlikely anymore.  “The people looking for it are responsible for all the weird things that have been going on in the past couple of weeks.  The hospital collapse in Raigmore, the stuff on Flotta, the Loch Ness Monster, all of it.”

            The Queen considered the contents of the hole, then tossed her purse into it.  It landed on top of the upper slab, and a bit of the black fluid licked up to drag it off and down out of sight, like a fish snatching an insect from the surface of the water.  Seeing that, Natasha was glad none of them had tried to use the object as a stepping stone.

            “Who’s in charge of nonsense like this?” the Queen asked her bodyguards.

            “Cornelius Fudge?” one of them suggested.

            The Queen was not amused.  “I’d prefer somebody who actually exists, thank you,” she said, and beckoned to the group in the apse.  “Since it seems like I’m not going to Monaco this morning, I think you’d better come and tell me what’s going on, someplace we don’t have to shout to each other from either side of an open portal to hell.  Someone put something over this hole so nobody falls into the abyss,” she told her followers, “and we’ll take this lot back to my place.”

            Nat was pretty sure that was the strangest way anybody had ever been invited to Buckingham Palace.

            “Your Majesty,” Sir Stephen protested, “we cannot leave the Grail unguarded!  The Red Death now knows its location, and he will surely come for it.”

            “The Red Death?” the Queen asked.  “You mean, Count John Totenkopf from the poem?”

            “The very one,” Sir Stephen said.

            “Then before we go, somebody better ring the Prime Minister and get the army in here,” she decided.  “I’m gonna go wait in the car.  You,” she pointed at Allen Jones.  “You come with me.  You look like you need a good stiff drink.”

            She tottered off again, with her bodyguards around her and Allen in tow.  The rest of the security people stayed behind, looking nervous and keeping well back of the open pit.  Another twenty minutes or so went by with everyone just standing around, and then more people began to arrive.  The first of these were soldiers, who brought some big sheets of Dunbar plate to lay across the Grail pit.  Nat tried not to show how nervous she was walking across this, but the substance between the stones didn’t bother them.  Maybe, she thought, you had to touch it for it to do anything to you.

            While they’d waited in the basement, the upper levels of the keep had filled with people.  Scientists were preparing equipment and military types were clearing space to set up a command post.  Whispers and stares greeted the group as the security guards escorted them through these workers, but nobody tried to talk to them.  Nat wondered what these people had been told.

            Outside, police and the military were cordoning things off.  The Tower grounds, which yesterday had been full of tourists, were today full of soldiers.  Two helicopters were lowering supplies and gear on chains.  Men were taking sandbags off trucks to build up fortifications, while others gathered up things like the animal sculptures and the old bronze cannon and moved them out of the way.

            “Didn’t you say your Queen wasn’t able to call up an army?” Sir Stephen asked Nat, with a smug smile.

            “I said she couldn’t force civilians to fight,” Nat corrected him.  “She does _have_ an army.”

            “I have to admit, I didn’t know she could actually give it orders,” said Sam.

            “Probably she’s never tried to,” Sharon observed.

            A sleek black limousine was waiting for them at the Tower’s entrance gate, where the tourists normally lined up – a few early risers were already there, with the police shooing them back as they tried to figure out what was going on.  Inside the car, the Queen was sitting watching while one of her bodyguards fed sashimi to a pet corgi.  Across from her, Allen Jones was sipping a glass of something, trying not to look awkward.

            “Ah, here’s the rest,” said the Queen.  The corgi got up on its stubby legs to growl at them, but she put a hand on its rump and made it sit down again.  “Sit, Oscar,” she ordered.  “They’ll have your hairs all over them soon enough, and then you’ll just assume they’re yours.”

            After days of roaming the countryside in increasingly cramped vehicles, nobody really wanted to get back into another car – even a spacious and comfortable one with a built-in bar.  Nat’s companions got in regardless, but before she followed, Natasha herself took a last worried look back at the Tower.  It was positively crawling with people now, busy setting up defenses and weapons as if they were expecting an actual medieval siege.  More were arriving by the minute, both by air in the helicopters and by water in boats on the Thames.  Would all this do any _good_ , she wondered, or was it a lot of show for nothing?  Would the Red Death find it intimidating, or laughable?

            Not far from the car was a man in an olive-brown coat and peaked cap, with a gold cord on his shoulder – a general.  Nat went up and tapped him on the shoulder.  “Excuse me,” she said.

            The general turned around.  He was very dark-skinned, with a bald head and a short beard, and he peered at her with his left eye while the right one, a slightly different colour, looked off in another direction.  “Can I help you?” he asked.

            “You need to put horseshoes over every door and window in the outer wall,” said Nat, feeling a little silly but at the same time sure he needed to be told.  “And don’t clear the ivy.  Surround the windows with it if you can.”

            “What for?” asked the General.

            “Keeps the fairies out,” said Natasha, staying deadly serious despite her urge to smile.  It was no laughing matter.

            “Do what she says, Nicky!” the Queen shouted from inside the car.  “It’ll let me get out of here faster!”

            “Yes, your Majesty,” said the General, and nodded to Nat.  “Horseshoes and ivy.  Got it.”

            “Thanks.”  Now Nat smiled, and glanced at his pocket to see his name.  “General Fury.”

            She climbed into the car.  As large as it was, it could just barely hold them all comfortable.  It didn’t help that they weren’t quite sure whether protocol allowed them to sit next to the queen, and nobody wanted to get too close to Oscar the corgi.  The dog kept glaring at them out of the corners of its beady eyes as the limo pulled away, as if daring them to try something.

            “So who are you lot, exactly?” the Queen asked.

            “I am Sir Stephen of Rogsey,” Sir Stephen replied.  “Also from the poem.”

            She nodded approvingly.  “You’re even more handsome than I imagined you.  Pity you couldn’t have turned up when I was in my twenties.  Even in my _fifties_.  I’d’ve climbed that like a tree.”

            Sir Stephen thought for a moment, then decided to just pretend she hadn’t said that.  “I understand you are the distant descendant of William of Normandy,” he added, “but if it is your intention to keep England and her people safe, and to keep the Grail from the hands of the Red Death, then you shall have my sword and my fealty for however long you and I both live.”

            “Very good, I accept,” said the Queen.  “I haven’t got any holy oil or whatever nonsense on me at the moment but I’m sure we can work something out later.  What about the rest of you?”

            “Robin Hood, of Sherwood Forest,” said Robin, possibly hoping for some flattery of his own.

            The Queen looked him over.  “Not quite as handsome as I imagined _you_ ,” she decided.  “Still, one can’t have everything.”

            Robin sat back, disappointed.

            “The rest of us are real people,” said Nat, then glanced at Allen and amended the statement, “ _almost_ all of us.  I’m… I’m Dr. Jones from the archaeology department at Dundee University, except I’m _actually_ a former Soviet secret agent hiding from my former bosses.  My real name is Natalia Romanova.”

            The Queen cocked her head.  “You totally sure about that ‘real person’ thing?” she asked.

            “Most of the time,” Nat replied, without so much as a twitch of a smile.  “You’ve already met Allen,” she added.

            “He’s your father, except he’s not, because you conjured him up with a wishing stone the same way that barmy git in Scotland conjured up a lake full of monsters,” said the Queen, nodding to Allen.  She looked next at Sam and Sharon.

            “We’re the boring ones,” said Sam.  “I’m Dr. Sam Wilson, formerly of Raigmore Hospital.”

            “DI Sharon Carter, of the Inverness Police,” Sharon said.  “Probably also formerly, once they find out what I’ve been doing this week.”

            “I’m sorry about your colleagues, Dr. Wilson, that was dreadful,” said the Queen.  She held out a hand, and her bodyguard paused in hand-feeding the corgi in order to give her a snifter of brandy.  “I always feel awkward about this bit,” she admitted, swirling the glass in her hand a little.  “As if I ought to be introducing myself in turn, but it’s not as if you don’t know who I am and it would be a waste of time to pretend.  So let’s skip that, and you can tell me about this Grail thing.”

            “I think Sir Stephen is the best person to do that,” said Nat.

            Sir Stephen started at the beginning.  He explained how he’d learned of the Red Death’s own quest for the Grail, and how he’d gotten involved in it.  Nat, Sharon, and Sam each described how _they’d_ been brought into the adventure, with Nat telling about Allen’s arrival and Sharon giving the details of Robin Hood’s.  The Queen listened, and had her bodyguard refill her brandy.

            “I’d have said you were all daft as badger sandwiches if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes,” she observed, as the car finally turned up the Mall through St. James Park, towards the palace.  “So what are you going to do with it now you’ve found the thing?”

            “That’s the part we’re having trouble with,” Natasha admitted.  “Originally we were going to sneak it into Kazakhstan and shoot it into space on an old Russian rocket, but when we came up with that we were picturing something I could put in my purse.”

            “Even I don’t have a purse that big,” the Queen agreed.

            “So for now,” Nat went on, “we just need to keep the Red Death away from it while we figure out something else.”

            “I’ll find some smart folks and put them on that,” the Queen promised.

            “There’s one other thing,” Natasha added.  “I’m worried the Red Death might try to bring something like that colossus into the city, and if he does…”

            The Queen’s eyebrows rose, making deep folds in her already wrinkled brow.  “You want to evacuate London?  I don’t think it’s ever been done.”  She sipped her brandy thoughtfully.  “We didn’t even evacuate during the Blitz.  I doubt the shores of the Thames have been empty in three thousand years.”

            She was probably right.  There’d been a prehistoric settlement by the river before the Romans arrived, and under their rule Londinium had grown into the largest city in the province of Brittania.  After the Empire fell, London had remained important in Saxon times and right through the Middle Ages.  It had burned down several times, but people always came back.  The wealthy fled the Black Death but the rest of the population had stayed put and weathered the epidemic.  Londoners didn’t get out of the way of oncoming disaster: they hunkered down and sat it out.

            “We’d better try it now, I think,” said Nat.

            More military types were waiting in Buckingham Palace’s red-carpeted foyer, with updates on the situation.  The Tower Bridge had been raised, they said, and the nearby streets barricaded.  The Tower complex itself was being fortified and manned as if for war.  The castle probably hadn’t seen this much military activity in centuries.

            “I want announcements on the radio and the telly for people to leave,” said the Queen.  “I’ll give the speech myself – that’ll make it seem more urgent.  Everybody’s got to go, because there’s a potential terror threat in the Southwark district.  Where’s my speechwriter?”

            “He’s on holiday in Wales, because you were supposed to be going to Monte Carlo, your Majesty,” said one of the men.

            “Well, somebody give him a ring and tell him _both_ our holidays are cancelled,” said the Queen.  “And somebody get these kids some breakfast.”  She gestured to Nat and the others.  “They’ve had a long night.”

            While the Queen continued barking orders at people, the rest of them were escorted into a gilded palace dining room for breakfast.  All were coming down off an adrenaline high, and exhaustion was starting to catch up with them – Allen had dark circles under both eyes, and Nat caught Robin Hood pretending he wasn’t yawning.  Nat might have more control over herself, but she was tired, too, not to mention deeply, deeply relieved.

            Nat was used to doing what she did alone.  In that sense, this whole adventure had already been out of the ordinary, in that she had half a dozen other people with her, but they’d still been going about it the way spies would, trying not to let anybody find out what they were up to because nobody would believe them if they did.  Now that they actually had the Grail uncovered, people couldn’t _disbelieve_ , and they suddenly had the resources of a country at their disposal.  Nat still wasn’t sure how much it would _help_ , but it did feel like a weight lifted from her shoulders.

            That, in turn, meant that for the first time since she’d learned about the disappearance of Mr. Pierce from his warehouse in Scotland, Natasha could actually _relax_.  After being so tightly wound for so long, it was downright bizarre to sit calmly eating breakfast while other people dealt with things.  Especially when the breakfast was eggs benedict and poached salmon in a room literally fit for royalty, with men in wigs and frock coats looking down their noses at her from the enormous paintings on the wall.

            Whatever else Nat might say about this week, she couldn’t claim it hadn’t been full of new experiences.


	21. Upgrades

            The group hadn’t managed to have a proper meal since breakfast at the Bed and Breakfast in Edwinstowe, and knew better than to take it for granted that circumstances would allow them a decent lunch or dinner that day, so they made the most of it.  Everybody had seconds, and the astonished servants brought Sir Stephen thirds and fourths while offering everybody else tea to finish off with.

            They would have given Sir Stephen tea as well, but he looked scared he’d break the gilt-edged cup if he so much as touched it, and held up a hand to refuse.  “I would prefer ale, if you have it,” he said.

            Robin Hood accepted a cup and ignored the handled, drinking instead as if from a bowl.  He made a face at what he tasted.

            “This stuff’s weak,” he told the waiter.  “You got any of the other kind?  Coffee?  That’s the good one.”

            “Right away, Mr. Hood,” the waiter replied.  He was a very tall thin man with a bit of silver hair around the edges of a shiny bald head, and the expression on his face suggested he had resigned himself to a very long day of entertaining these odd strangers.  It made Nat wonder how often, exactly, the Queen brought random people home with her.  This couldn’t possibly be the first time.

            “I wouldn’t mind coffee, either,” Allen spoke up.

            “Two coffees.”  The waiter nodded and looked at Natasha.

            “I’m fine with tea,” she assured him.    Sharon and Sam, who already had their drinks, agreed.

            The waiter went to get the coffee made, and silence fell in the room.  Nat shut her eyes and savoured it a moment.  A couple of windows were open, and she could hear swans honking to each other in the palace gardens and traffic on the roads a long way off, but other than that the only sound was the clink of a spoon on china as Sam added sugar to his tea.  There hadn’t been a lot of _quiet_ in the past few days, and Nat suspected that, too, wouldn’t last very long.

            “I never thought I’d be having tea in Buckingham Palace,” Allen observed.

            “Me either,” Natasha said, then opened her eyes and looked at him warily.  Was this it?  Were they going to have to keep pretending that they were a normal family and everything was okay?

            “Natasha?” he asked.  “It’s Natasha, right?”

            “It’s actually Natalia,” said Nat.  “I go by Natasha or Natalie, because those are more common in the west.  Honestly, you can call me whatever you want.”  She sipped her tea, and hoped he wouldn’t take that as an invitation to keep calling her _Ginger Snap_.

            Allen nodded and took a deep breath.  “When I said goodbye to you last night…” he began.

            “Do we _have_ to talk about it?” Nat asked.

            “Yes,” he said.  “At least, I think we’d better.”

            For a moment she was torn.  Allen Jones seemed like a nice person and it wasn’t his fault he was in this situation.  Natasha didn’t want to break his heart, and yet if she were going to _learn_ anything from this mess, it had to be that truth was always better.  It wasn’t as if she’d be telling him something he didn’t already know.  “I said what I said because I thought you needed to hear it,” she told him.  “It wasn’t… it wasn’t real.”

            “I know,” he replied.  “I thought you were putting me up there as an excuse to leave me behind, and I figured if I were never going to see you again, I just… I wanted to go out on something nice.  If I’d known you really were coming back for me, I wouldn’t have done that.”

            “Oh,” said Nat, and for a moment she had nothing to follow it with.  Had he really believed she would do that?  Then again, why shouldn’t he?  It wasn’t as if she’d ever told him anything different.  “You thought we’d just leave you behind?”

            “I haven’t been the most useful guy on this trip,” said Allen, his eyes on his empty plate.  “And you didn’t want me here to begin with.”

            “If we were going to leave you behind because of that, we would have done it after Flotta,” said Nat.  When she’d been angriest with him, and he’d been ready to go anyway.

            He looked up a little.  “Why didn’t you?”

            That was a good question, and the honest answer wasn’t the one Allen would want.  Truth was best, Nat reminded herself – even if that truth hurt people.  Nobody learned anything from a lie.  She did, however, try to phrase that ugly truth as gently as possible.  “Because that would have been _mean_ ,” she said.  “You’d be all alone in a foreign country, and you weren’t in any shape to find your own way home even if you’d had a home to go to.  We couldn’t just leave you there.”

            “So you were stuck with me,” he said, looking at the table again.

            Nat couldn’t tell if he were being passive-aggressive or just whiny – either way, she groaned.  “What do you want me to say?” she asked.

            “Nothing,” sighed Allen.  “I’m sorry.  I just want _something_ to not be a lie.”

            Sir Stephen rapped on the table with his knuckles.  “ _That_ is not a lie, Allen,” he said.  “We are eating at the Queen’s table – that is true.  You are flesh and blood, you are surrounded by friends, and we are on a quest to save the land.  You are a good man, though not a warrior, and you love your daughter.  All of these things are true.  If we cannot trust to our histories or even to our memories, we can trust in the moment we are experiencing, and _this_ ,” he knocked on the wood again, “is real.”

            The waiter returned with coffee in silver-plated cups that Natasha suspected had last been used by Queen Victoria.  He handed the first one to Allen, who thanked him and then held the cup under his nose to smell the contents.

            “Yeah,” he said quietly.  “That’s real.”

            The Queen finally rejoined them about twenty minutes later, by which time Allen had gotten up to admire the art, and Robin Hood had sprawled across one of the fancy chaise lounges under the tall windows and was fast asleep and snoring.  The Queen shuffled up to him and poked him in the ribs.

            “Wakey-wakey,” she said.

            Robin woke with a start, and quickly got to his feet.  “Sorry, your Majesty,” he said through a yawn.

            “Princess Alexandra embroidered those cushions herself,” said the Queen.  “Every stitch.  Good to see somebody finally using them.”  She turned to the others, who were gathering to see what she had to say.  “General Fury wants you lot back at the Tower to inspect their preparations,” she said.  “Since you’re the ones who know what this Red Death character is capable of.”

            Nat didn’t know about anybody else, but she was pleased to have an opportunity to get back in the action – even if it meant leaving the silence behind.  Help was nice, but it wasn’t the same as being there personally to make sure things were going smoothly.  “Of course, your Majesty,” she said.

            “I don’t think the fortification has been built that could stop the Red Death entirely,” said Sir Stephen, “but perhaps we can hope to slow him down a little.”  He finished the mug of beer the waiter had brought him, and set it carefully down on the table.  “If everyone else is ready?”

            The others didn’t look particularly ready as far as Nat could tell.  They looked like they’d much rather join Robin Hood in sleeping on the priceless antique sofas.  But one by one they stood up, straightened their clothes, and nodded.  Even Allen Jones – he didn’t want to be here, but if the others were calling on him, he was ready to go.  It made Nat feel bad for thinking of him as a coward.  He was braver than even he knew. 

* * *

            If the Tower had been a hive of activity when they left at sunrise, that was nothing compared to how they find it when they returned, having had a chance to wash up and change their clothes before leaving, at noon.  The whole place had been thoroughly fortified, and there were almost as many soldiers in it as there were tourists on a normal day.  People were shouting orders.  Flowerbeds were being dug up.  The animal sculptures had been piled under a tent near the Royal Mint, and the bronze cannon moved to make way for what looked like an anti-tank gun.

            At the main gate, where the ticket takers usually were, a checkpoint had been set up.  A man came up and greeted the Queen’s limousine with a salute.

            “Can I see some identification, please?” he asked, as the group piled out of the car.

            “Oh, go find something useful to do,” the Queen told him.  Sir Stephen reached to help her up from the car seat, but she swatted him away.  “I’m not dead yet,” she said.

            The man who’d asked for ID bowed to her.  “I just need to make sure everybody’s cleared, your Majesty,” he said.

            “They’re with me – of _course_ they’re bloody cleared,” the Queen said.

            They headed inside, and Nat realized there might be a problem with having all these people in the area.  “I don’t know about the crowds,” she said.  “If the Grail can bring lies to life, do we really want to surround it with potential liars?”  Any one of these people might be telling a lie right now… about their family, about what they did last night, about anything, really.  Most such lies would be fairly harmless, but what about the ones that _weren’t_?

            “I know not,” Sir Stephen said.  “I do not like so many knowing its location, myself, but this is all too much for we alone to handle.”

            “If that thing just granted wishes willy-nilly we’d have heard about it by now,” the Queen decided.  “There’s stories about all sorts of nonsense going on here, Anne Boleyn with her head under her arm and all that, but so far as I know none of it involves miracles.”

            Nat thought about it.  “I had the fragment in my hand when I was talking to Sue about my father,” she remembered, “and also when I told you guys I’d figured out where the Grail was.  Maybe it won’t work unless you’re touching it.”  She remembered how the black fluid had snatched up the Queen’s pink clutch.  “Have you told people not to touch?”

            “ _Somebody_ better have,” said the Queen.  “Though I’d hope they have the sense to figure that out for themselves.”

            When they rounded the White Tower to the chapel side, Natasha was startled to see a yellow mechanical shovel parked next to the ruins of the Wardrobe Tower, and people standing around it in fluorescent vests and hard hats.  The archaeologist in her wanted to run up and demand to be told what they were doing.  The spy in her, knowing what was hidden in the chapel, wanted the same.

            One individual left the group and came up to salute the Queen.  This was the man with the glass eye, the one Natasha had earlier warned about horseshoes and ivy – General Fury.  “Your Majesty,” he said.

            “At ease, Nicky,” said the Queen.

            “What are you digging up?” Natasha demanded.

            General Fury looked a little offended for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure why he should answer this rude question.  Then he seemed to remember that Natasha was one of the ‘experts’ he’d specifically asked for.

            “Her Majesty requested that we get the, uh, Grail, out of the White Tower basement so it can be properly disposed of,” he explained.  “The problem is, according to our architects, that the Grail was put there first and then the Tower was built _over_ it.  It’s twice the size of the basement door.  We obviously can’t tear the keep down, so we’re going to try digging a tunnel in from the side.”

            “What’s under the lawn there?” asked Natasha.  It was almost certainly historically important – this was the _Tower of London_ , after all.  Even as she’d been digging up the basement floor, she hadn’t intended to damage any more of it than absolutely necessary.

            “Professor Gates is trying to figure that out right now,” said Fury, indicating one of the people in the hard hats.  This was a man with a ginger beard and round, John Lennon-type sunglasses, peering at a computer printout.  “Professor!” the General barked.

            Gates looked up, and did a double-take when he realized the Queen had arrived.  “Your Majesty!” he said, hurrying over with his printout in hand.  “We _tried_ to do a geomagnetic survey, but it turns out the power cables for the Royal Armories run right through here.  We’re waiting for ground-penetrating radar.”

            “Whatever.  Get on with it,” said the Queen.  She turned to look at the rest of the group.  “You lot are supposed to know your onions on this,” she said.  “Have you got any better ideas?  Is the Grail the whole mess, or just the black bogeys in the middle?”

            Nat shrugged.  She looked at Sir Stephen, but he didn’t know, either.  The only person who knew the answer might well be the Red Death himself – or maybe even he wasn’t sure.  “Going in from the side sounds like about the only choice,” she said.  “We don’t know which part is the Grail, so we have to assume it’s the whole thing.”

            “You don’t know a damned thing about it, but neither does anyone else.”  The Queen snorted.  “Typical!”

            “And we can’t move a _spade_ of that soil before we know what’s under it,” Gates put in.  “Nobody’s been digging down there since the power cables were laid – we can’t risk doing any more damage to…”

            “You’ll dig where we tell you to dig, in the interests of national security!” huffed Fury.

            “And they’re back to the same argument they were doubtless having before we arrived,” said the Queen, with a shake of her head.  “Let’s see where else we can help.”

            The rest of the day passed quickly, in a whirlwind of preparations.  The government continued trying to evacuate Southwark in an orderly fashion, while the military prepared the Tower for assault despite the fact that nobody could really suggest what form that attack might take.  The Shard was closed to tourists and some troops placed in the View, where they could look down and spot anybody coming in by air or on the river.  The Crown Jewels and other valuable items were packed up in armored trucks to be taken to secure locations elsewhere in the country – Sam and Sir Stephen offered to help with this, but Sir Stephen was soon distracted by a particular suit of armor.

            Unlike most of the display armor, which would have been far too small for a modern person to wear, this one was sized for somebody over six feet tall and very broad across the chest.  It was richly decorated with little sculptural elements, tastefully gilded, and its focal point was an enormous codpiece, which Nat observed must have belonged to somebody either extremely secure or extremely _insecure_ in his masculinity.  The codpiece wasn’t what interested Sir Stephen, though.  He, instead, seemed to be comparing its height to his own.

            “That one looks like I’d about fit you, doesn’t it?” asked the Queen, who was puttering around shouting at people to amuse herself.  “What to try it on?”

            “I should be delighted,” said Sir Stephen.  “I hope I will be able to do honour to the warrior for whom it was made.  Who was he?”

            “Some kind of a bruiser, obviously,” said the Queen, “though this looks like he never wore it except on parade.  Hey, you two over there!”  She pointed to a couple of curators, who were checking pieces off a list.  “You know how to put armor on a man?”

            “Uh… theoretically, your Majesty,” said the taller woman, who had dark hair in a chin-length bob.

            “I’ve read about it, your Majesty,” said the other, who had long sandy-brown hair in a ponytail.  “I’ve never actually tried it, though.”

            “Time for some experimental history, then,” the Queen said pleasantly.  “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to put _this_ armor on _this_ man!”  She patted Sir Stephen on the shoulder.

            The two curators looked Sir Stephen over.  The dark-haired one licked her lips, while the blonde looked like she’d just been slapped.

            “Your Majesty!” the blonde protested.  “That armor belonged to King Henry the Eighth!”

            That explained the codpiece, Nat thought.

            “Did it really?” asked the Queen.  “Yes, that daft wanker _would_ , wouldn’t he?  Well, that settles it – it just became an order.  Kit him out, ladies.”

            Sam elbowed Sir Stephen in the side.  “Better use the loo,” he said.

            The two curators found a replica gambeson for Sir Stephen to wear, and started to strap on the armor on him from the feet up, piece by piece.  Nat, Sharon, and the Queen passed around a bag of popcorn the latter had gotten from somewhere and watched appreciatively, while Sam remarked that somebody really ought to call Windsor and ask whether the dead king were rolling over in his grave.

            “I feel like _I_ ought to be wearing some kind of battle regalia,” the Queen remarked.  “Haven’t we got any of that?”

            The dark-haired woman, who was buckling the breastplate onto Sir Stephen’s chest, shook her head.  “The last monarch to lead an army in the field was King George the Third, your Majesty,” she said.  “That was in 1743.”

            The Queen took another handful of popcorn.  “We need to do something about that.”

            Last of all, the women slipped the helmet over Sir Stephen’s head and tied it in place.  Then they stood back to appraise their work, and seemed satisfied.  Sir Stephen’s posture was very erect and with his hands on his hips it looked almost like the armor was still on the display dummy.  Then he opened the faceplate, and looked around.

            “How’s it feel?” asked Nat.

            Sir Stephen raised his arms above his head and then let them drop, and twisted his body back and forth.  He moved surprisingly freely for a man in a tin can, but the sounds he made suggested he didn’t find it very comfortable.

            “Well-protected, certainly,” he said in answer to her question, “but I’m not sure of my ability to fight while dressed thus.  The chest plate constricts the breathing, and with the helmet closed I can hear little and see less.  And it seems to me there is less valor in battle when a man is so encased in steel.  What need have I of courage, if I cannot be hurt?”

            “You can’t be hurt, anyway,” Sharon pointed out.

            “I can, though,” Sir Stephen protested.  “I am merely quick to recover from it.”

            Nat hadn’t thought through the implications of that before.  Now that she did, she realized that whenever she’d seen Sir Stephen injured – whether beaten and shot, or with his legs crushed by the colossus, or even in his own story about having his back broken in the fight on Anglesey – he’d always been conscious and in pain.  Knowing he was going to recover might actually make it _worse_ , since he would know that he could not be released from his pain by dying.  That put a very different spin on things.  Maybe somebody like Sir Stephen needed to be _more_ brave, knowing that he was going to endure more suffering.

            “Merely wearing this is hot work,” Sir Stephen said, twitching his thighs to try and get the armor into a more comfortable position.  Nat and Sharon both giggled.  Sir Stephen’s eleventh century chain mail had probably been heavier, but it wouldn’t have protected him quite so _intimately_.  When he took a step, he did so with bow legs.  “I would like a drink.”

            “They’ve got a water truck outside,” said the Queen.  “They figured the little thumb fountains wouldn’t be enough for everybody.”

            Watching Sir Stephen descend the stairs in the clanking armor, walking as if he had a knife at his groin, was an experience – it wasn’t nice to laugh at him, but it was also difficult not to.  When he emerged into the sunshine, the reflection from the polished and gilded metal was almost blinding.  Nat’s urge to laugh grew as she realized this was probably the only time in her life she would actually see a _knight in shining armor_.

            The guys manning the water truck either had less self-control than Natasha or else didn’t care if Sir Stephen knew they were laughing at him.  They addressed him as _your Highness_ and offered to pour the cup of water down the back of his neck for him.  He surprised them by agreeing, and then stood still while they did it, and appeared to enjoy the experience.

            Nat, meanwhile, noticed that the geophysicists were still standing around outside the chapel, poring now over what appeared to be several printouts taped together.  The only people _talking_ , though, were General Fury and Professor Gates, who were still carrying on their argument from earlier.

            “I know what the Queen said!” Gates was saying, “but on behalf of the entire archaeological community, we can’t _possibly_ just dig a hole!  If you look here,” he traced some roughly geometric shapes on the printout, “there are at _least_ six un-excavated Roman tombs under our feet, and it would be a crime against history not to properly record them, even if we do nothing else!”

            “The entire archaeological community, eh?” asked Fury.  “The redhead there is an archaeologist.”  He waved Nat over.  “What was the name?”

            “Natalie Jones,” she said.  Perhaps she should have used her real name, but that was the one that came out.

            “Dr. Jones.”  General Fury nodded.  “You found the Grail – are a bunch of dead Italians more important than getting it out of here?”

            Nat winced.  She knew what the answer was to that, but even so, it took her a moment and a couple of deep breaths to make herself _say_ it.  “No, the Grail is the most important thing.”  She’d told everybody else that before they got started, and herself the same thing before taking up the chapel floor.  She couldn’t back down from that position now.

            “We don’t even know who’s buried here!” Gates protested.

            “Then you’ll just have to save the spoil and go through it later,” said Nat.

            “There’ll be no stratigraphy!” he moaned.

            Nat felt for him, but she shook her head.  “If the only way to get to the Grail is through those tombs, then I’m afraid they’ve got to go,” she said.

            General Fury smiled and gave a satisfied nod, then went up and rapped on the window of the digging machine.  The man inside looked up from his phone.

            “Just a sec,” he said.

            “Just a sec?” asked Fury.  “What are you doing that’s so important?”

            “Nothing, really,” the man said, “it’s just that this bit of tumble-down wall is a pokegym, so…”

            “Get digging!” Fury barked.

            Even though she’d just given them the go-ahead, Nat couldn’t quite bring herself to _watch_ as the mechanical shovel started to tear up the turf.  Instead, as soon as its engine rumbled to life, she turned away and went to go get a drink for herself.  Sir Stephen had settled down and was chugging water out of a large bowl, while the armory curator with the bobbed hair and brought Robin Hood a tray of arrowheads from the collection and was explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each.

            “I never worried much what they were _shaped_ like, as long as they went where I aimed them and were sharp at one end,” Robin said, turning one of the examples over in his hand.  “You hit the right spot, and it doesn’t matter where the barbs are or any of that.  Your man can’t even _try_ to pull the arrow out of him if he’s already dead.”

            Out of the corner of her eye, Nat caught sight of somebody approaching her, and turned around _just_ before the individual could tap her on the shoulder.  This seemed to startle the young woman, who took a quick step backwards, so Natasha smiled to reassure her.

            “Can I help you?” she asked.

            The woman who’d just approached was no more than twenty-four or twenty-five.  She had smooth, straight brown hair and brown eyes, and was wearing black trousers and a frilly polka-dot blouse.  She rallied and returned Nat’s smile.

            “Good morning,” she said.  “Or good afternoon, I suppose.  I’m Dr. Simmons from the Royal Military College of Science in Shrivenham.  This is Dr. Fitz.”  She gestured to her companion, an even younger man with curly hair, in a button-down shirt and cardigan.  He was carrying a metal briefcase.  “We heard Robin Hood was here,” Dr. Simmons added.

            Robin stood up.  “That’s me,” he announced.  “Robin of Barton.”

            “Oh?”  Dr. Simmons looked at him in surprise  “You don’t look a thing like I imagined you,” she said.

            “I hear that a lot,” said Robin.

            “At least unlike some other Robin Hoods, he can speak with an English accent,” put in Dr. Fitz, who was Scottish, himself.

            “I see you’ve been looking at arrowheads,” said Dr. Simmons.

            “Yeah, Chloe here’s been showing me some of the fancy ones,” Robin agreed.

            “Well, if you like fancy arrows, we’ve got some for you,” said Dr. Fitz.  He took his case over to one of the folding tables that had been set up by the water truck, and opened it.  Nat and the others gathered around to see what was inside.  Perhaps unsurprisingly it was full of arrows, all neatly nestled in foam.

            Dr. Fitz held one up.  “These are explosive-tipped,” he said.  “The charge is triggered by the deceleration when they hit something.  It’s not enough to knock down a wall or anything, but it ought to do a job on armor or a car door.  Only problem is, you can’t re-use them, since obviously they blow up.”

            Robin picked one up and examined it, then moved a finger along the shaft until he found the place where it balanced, just behind the point.  “A bit top-heavy,” he said.

            Dr. Simmons offered another arrow.  “These ones deliver an electric shock, about equivalent to a police taser.  They’ll overload the nervous system and cause about five minutes of paralysis.  And you _can_ collect and re-use them, even if the zap only works once,” she added, with a smile at her partner.  Apparently _design a better arrow_ had been something of a contest between the two.

            Dr. Fitz offered a third one.  “ _These_ are boomerangs,” he said proudly.

            “What’s that?” Robin asked.

            “After they fly away, they come back again,” Dr. Fitz explained.

            “Why would you want an arrow that comes back to the archer?” Sir Stephen wanted to know.

            “Because it’s _cool_ ,” huffed Dr. Fitz.

            Robin strung his bow and fitted the boomerang arrow to the string, then aimed for the banner flying from the nearest of the White Tower’s four turrets.  Loosed, the arrow went through the cloth and on into the sky, and a few seconds later returned to stick quivering in the earth at Robin’s feet.

            He laughed as he pulled it out.  “I like it!  Too bad I can’t take a few of these back to Sherwood with me… imagine the look on Nottingham’s face!  No, imagine the look on _Marian_ ’s face, when I tell her I’m no outlaw now, but a hero with the support of the Queen!”

            Sir Stephen shook his head, but Robin looked eagerly at the two young scientists.  “Any more?”

            “That’s all,” said Dr. Simmons, “although there is _one_ more thing.”  She took a notebook out of her bag.  “Can we have your autograph?”

            “What’s that?” Robin asked.

            “Sign your name.”  She opened the book and offered it to him.  “There.”

            Robin looked at it.  “It’s blank,” he said.  “Why sign it?”  He was worried now, afraid he would be tricked into a legal agreement.

            “So I can prove I met you,” said Dr. Simmons.

            “He’s a peasant,” said Sir Stephen.  “He cannot write.”  He stood up and took his gauntlets off.  “I can, however – I will sign your book for you.”  He took the pen and notebook and did so.

            “Um, thank you,” Dr. Simmons said, taking it back.

            Dr. Fitz looked over her shoulder.  “Who’s _Sir Stephen of Rogsey_?” he asked.

            Robin smiled smugly.  Sir Stephen might have been the one who could write, but in their game of _Who’s More Famous_ he’d won this round, too.


	22. Fall of the Shard

            By evening, Professor Gates and his archaeologists had dug out a deep trench next to the chapel wall.  They’d pulled up a lot of Roman bricks and a few pieces of pottery and alabaster that a Dr. Lewis identified as broken burial urns – Nat took her word for it.  The excavation got as far as the White Tower’s foundations, then stopped as the diggers and engineers considered options for shoring it up.

            “What’s taking so long?” the Queen asked, passing by with a glass of cognac in her hand.

            “This part’s a little delicate,” Gates explained to her.  “They’d already built the foundations by the time they decided to hide the Grail in here, and they had to knock down this part of the wall to accommodate the alterations to the chapel and apse.  If we aren’t careful, this whole corner of the kee might come down on top of us.”

            The Queen sighed.  “Old Billy might’ve been a tosser to the North but he knew where to put something so you couldn’t get it back,” she observed.  “How much time do you need?”

            “If we want to do it _right_?  A few weeks, most likely,” Gates replied.  “We’ll want to do some modelling of the stresses within the walls, and get a proper LIDAR scan of the whole area.  Some cores to find the bedrock will help make sure…”

            “What if you don’t care if you do it right?” the Queen interrupted.

            “Then one of the oldest buildings in London comes crashing down around our ears and probably kills a dozen people,” said Gates.

            “Well, we don’t have a few weeks, that’s for certain,” the Queen said.  “What can we do by tomorrow morning?”

            “We can dynamite the bloody Tower, it’ll do the same job!” Professor Gates groused.  After a rather long pause, he belatedly added, “your Majesty.”

            The Queen rolled her eyes.  “Just see what you can do to step up that timetable,” she ordered, and turned to General Fury.  “Nicky, how’s the evacuation going?”

            “We’ve got everybody out of the City borough, your Majesty,” Fury replied, “and the only people in Southwark ought to e the secondary command and communications unit I set up at the top of the Shard.  We’re still working on Lambeth and Westminster, but even just the four boroughs are nearly a million people, and there’s also the Tower Hamlets.”  He shook his head.  “As you probably know, nobody’s ever tried to evacuate London.”

            “We probably should have,” the Queen snorted.  “ _Keep calm and carry on_ is all very well, but _don’t bloody stand where the bombs are falling_ is much better advice!”

            “Then there’s the homeless,” Fury went on, “and the fact that a lot of these people have nowhere to go except other parts of London.”

            “Can we paint a big target on the Millennium Dome, do you think?” the Queen asked him.  “We never did need the thing.”

            At eight thirty, a late supper was served.  The Queen and a few other politicians who’d turned up to watch or meddle went to dine elsewhere, while the soldiers had their meal on site.  Natasha and the others were invited to eat with General Fury in the Hall of Monarchs.  This was a surprisingly medieval affair, itself, in that the fighting men got their rations outside while the Lords of the Manor ate in style.  The food was fit for the Queen even if she wasn’t there, and the table was laid with very expensive china and a selection of forks that Sir Stephen seemed to find quite intimidating.

            “Go from the outside in,” Sharon whispered to him as they sat down.

            Nat had just spread her napkin in her lap and a waiter had asked her if she wanted a glass of water, when a man hurried in and saluted to General Fury before handing him a mobile phone.  “It’s Hill in the Shard observation post,” he explained.

            Fury took the phone and put it to his ear.  “Fury,” he said.

            Whatever his second-in-command told him, it made his eyebrows rise into what would have been his hairline if he’d had any hair, then descend again as his brow furrowed.  “You must be joking,” he protested.  “The whole area’s been evacuated!”

            Some kind of reply was made, and Fury handed the phone back to the soldier.  “I’ll be right back,” he promised his guests, and strode out of the room looking worryingly like a man on a mission.

            Nat glanced around at each of her friends in turn – Sir Stephen, Sharon, Sam, Robin, Allen.  They all looked concerned, and Nat knew she wasn’t the only one who was _sure_ the phone call had been Grail-related.  Sir Stephen was the first to set his napkin aside and stand up, and one by one the others rose and followed him out of the building to find out what was going on.

            The sky had clouded over as the day passed and there was now a low overcast hanging above the city – and emerging from it like a dragon out of the mist was a large dark shape, roughly elliptical, with lights around its edge.  Natasha stopped on the pavement and craned her neck to stare at it, confused and unwilling to accept what her eyes were telling her.  That could not possibly be a flying saucer.  It could _not_.

            It sank lower, eventually emerging from the cloud layer into the clear.  There, Nat saw that it was _not_ an alien spaceship, but it wasn’t anything much better.  It was a huge black zeppelin, with the HYDRA logo painted on the side.

            Nat shrank back against the wall of the Waterloo block, her mind already groping for a solution.  Was there a way she could climb up, perhaps from the top of the White Tower, and get on board to take it down?  No, she didn’t need to do that – the army was here.  They’d shoot it down any moment now.  Was it a helium ship, though, or a hydrogen one?  Would destroying it drop an inferno on top of them?

            It felt like an eternity passed while she waited for somebody to destroy the looming airship, but nothing happened.  When Nat looked around, she realized that while Robin had an arrow on the string and was ready to fire, he’d been distracted by something behind them.  She followed his gaze, and saw that the soldiers on the walls had their attention focused somewhere not above, but outside – General Fury was standing on top of the Martin Tower looking out, and Sir Stephen was already on his way up to join them.

            Nat ran after Sir Stephen, and followed him up the ladder to the vantage point.  At the top, he stepped up next to General Fury and stopped short.  Nat ducked under his arm to see what was happening.

            Her jaw dropped.  Black-clad troops, thousands of them, were lining up in formation on Tower Hill Street.  They were coming out of the Royal Mint, out of St. Patrick’s College, and up from Trinity House.  Tanks with the HYDRA logo were rolling up East Smithfield to take positions between the men, and General Fury was standing there watching it all happen, his face turned a sickly shade of gray.

            Where had all these people _come_ from?  Fury himself had told the Queen that the city borough was the first to be evacuated!  Surely, all these buildings had been thoroughly checked, especially when many of them probably contained important and valuable items that would have had to be moved somewhere safe.  Unless the Red Death and Zola really _could_ transport large numbers of people by magic… but if they could do that, why _hadn’t_ they done it on Flotta?  This made no sense!  Even by the new rules the universe seemed to be adjusting to, this made _no sense_!  Why was Natasha even expecting it to?

            Fury lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth.  “Prepare to fire,” he ordered.  “Remember what you’re protecting – if the Tower falls, England falls!”

            As if in response to his words, a dozen raves that had been perched on various walls and roofs all suddenly too flight at once.  A legend said that if the ravens ever left the Tower of London, it would be the end of the British monarchy.  Nat hoped she wasn’t seeing an omen.

            Down in the streets, she began to hear the crack of gunfire.  Fury turned and shooed at her, and at Robin Hood, who’d climbed up behind her.

            “You’re civilians!” he said, urging them towards the ladder again.  “Get back inside, will you?  Yes, you too,” he added to Sir Stephen.  “That tin can won’t protect you from an AK-47.  I’ve got enough to do up here without worrying about the Queen’s guests getting shot!  Go!”

            The men on the walls began returning fire.  As she climbed back down the ladder, Nat could hear the sounds of explosions, shattering glass, and cracking masonry.  This was it, then – the battle had begun.  She glanced up at the ominously hovering Zeppelin again, but it didn’t appear to be doing anything but watching.  Maybe it was the equivalent of General Fury’s men surveying the battlefield from the top of the Shard.

            At the bottom of the ladder, Sam helped Natasha down and they all headed back indoors.  Nobody spoke, but somehow they all tacitly agreed that they would not return to the Waterloo Block.  Instead, they headed for the White Tower itself.  Maybe it seemed like the safest, best-protected part of the castle, the furthest from the attacking army outside, or maybe they felt it was their duty to protect the Grail in person.  They climbed the metal steps to the door of the armories, and the soldiers who had been left there to guard the place let them into the Great Hall.

            Last night this room had been full of armor and weapons.  Earlier today it had been full of people packing those things away.  Now it was almost empty, except for a few scattered pieces which Nat assumed must be modern replicas, not worth removing.  Sir Stephen’s clanking footsteps, in King Henry the Eighth’s ridiculous parade armor, echoed in the empty stone space.

            “I fear we may be here many days,” Sir Stephen said, sitting down heavily on a bench.  “They have cut off the streets and are watching from above to see that we don’t try to escape on the river.  They mean to starve us out.”

            “A siege,” Nat said.  Medieval sieges could last for years.  That was a terrible thought.

            “They’re surrounded by London,” said Sam.  “They can’t stay here long.”

            “You said yourself, even the Queen cannot make London become an army,” Sir Stephen reminded him.

            “Yeah, but more of the _actual_ army is already on its way,” Sam said.

            Nat didn’t say anything more, but sat listening to the fighting going on outside and wondering what the Red Death’s plan was.  If he just wanted to smash his way in, he was risking knocking the White Tower down, and then he would have to dig the Grail out from under the rubble… although she doubted he’d have Professor Gates qualms about dynamiting the building if he needed to.  If Nat had been in the mood for humour, she might have observed that tearing down the Tower of London would be enough in itself to bring about the Red Death’s downfall.  He would be torn limb from limb by furious historians and archaeologists

            Instead, she wondered how she’d ended up her.  Nat had gone into archaeology partly because she didn’t _want_ to be involved in changing the fate of nations anymore!  She wanted to do something quiet, something that was interesting but which most people barely noticed, and this field had seemed to fit the bill.  How had she been drawn back into the middle of a crisis?

            The others all had something approximating a _reason_ for being on this little adventure.  Sir Stephen thought it was his duty or his destiny or something, as well as wanting revenge for the death of a childhood friend.  Robin Hood wanted the life he’d dreamed about, and which he’d been so angry to learn he’d given up.  Sam liked the idea of being a knight on a quest.  Sharon was technically doing her _job_ , tracking down the man who’d murdered Alexander Pierce.  Allen Rushman simply had nowhere else to go.  Why was _Natasha_ doing this?

            She didn’t _need_ to be here.  She had no professional or personal stake in it.  She hadn’t lost a workplace like Sam had, or found herself in a world that had never heard of her, like Allen.  In fact, she was probably going to be in _trouble_ for running off and since she didn’t have tenure she might well _lose_ her job.

            Maybe it was because of the _truth_.  The very concept was at stake her.  Nat had chosen herself a profession concerned with discovering and preserving the truth, possibly because she felt bad about her previous work that was so often concerned with hiding and destroying it.  Maybe she wanted to save the idea of _truth_.

            Maybe she thought they needed her.  Nat had skills that none of the others did, or at least, that none of them _used_.  She could get into places and steal things and wheedle secrets out of people.  They weren’t skills she was _proud_ of, but she knew she was good at them, and she’d put them to use more than once in the past days.  Maybe she’d seen a chance to use what she knew to _save_ the world, rather than to undermine it.

            Maybe she just wanted some excitement in her life.  Marking papers at a university was a long way from travelling the world on secret missions every second week.  Maybe she’d merely been bored.

            She couldn’t turn back now, though – not from sitting inside this thousand-year-old castle keep with an army trying to batter their way in.  Good thing she’d never intended to.  Having started this, she was going to finish it, because that, too, had been part of her training.  Don’t abandon a mission unless the cost of completing it is greater than the advantage obtained.  Besides, the others were… by now they’d all been through enough together to consider each other friends.

            The sounds of battle went on, and it occurred to her: if the Red Death was trying to break down the walls and get in, he was doing a lousy job of it.  She’d heard plenty of noise, but had yet to _feel_ so much as a single shell.

            Nat got up and went to the window.  Outside she could see the Tower Green, Mint Street and the Beauchamp Tower.  None were damaged.  The men on top of the roofs and walls were responding to apparent fire from outside, but nobody seemed to have been hurt or killed.  She moved to the corner window, pressing her face against the glass at an awkward angle to get a look at the Chapel Royale and the west end of the Waterloo Block.  It was harder to see the tops of the walls there, but there was no sign of anything coming _in_ to the Tower area.

            “What do you see?” asked Sharon, looking over her shoulder.

            “Nothing,” Nat replied.  “That’s the problem.  I don’t think a single shot has actually made it over the walls.”  She stepped back from the window, frowning.  “If they have tanks outside, why don’t they just blast the walls down and walk in?”  The Tower’s moat had been drained in the early nineteenth century, leaving a deep grassy ditch around the castle.  A vehicle, even a tank, would get stuck in the bottom, but people could climb up the sides easily.  “I think they’re just trying to waste our ammo.”

            “Are they not firing back?” asked Allen, coming to see for himself.

            “Maybe they can’t aim,” said Robin.

            “Or maybe this is all a distraction while they try something else,” said Natasha.  She wasn’t sure what that would _be_ – why would anyone waste all these men and vehicles by sending them out to get shot at without firing back.  Unless… what if there _weren’t_ any men or vehicles?  Nat had wondered where they’d come from when the buildings all around were supposed to be empty and the police were keeping people out of the city borough.  What if this were just another lie?

            She zipped up her jacket and headed for the staircase.  “Robin,” she said.  “Come with me.”

            Robin Hood got to his feet.  “What are you going to do?”

            “Just take a look,” she replied.  “You said you’ve got the eyes of a hawk.”

            “He said he had the _ears_ of a hawk,” Sam corrected, “but he was drunk at the time.”

            “Whatever,” said Nat.  “Let’s go see.”

            “I’ve got the binoculars still,” Allen offered, and stood up to join them.

            While Sir Stephen, Sam, and Sharon waited below, the three climbed the spiral stairs up to the roof, where they found the huge Zeppelin hovering low over the tower.  There was no sign of activity on board, just the lights around the edge, pulsing gently with a heartbeat rhythm that was deeply creepy in the damp river fog closing in.  Why was that there if it wasn’t _doing_ anything?  Shouldn’t it be dropping gas bombs, or lowering men on ropes?  Nat peered at the gondola through the binoculars, but though the windows were lit, she couldn’t see anyone moving around inside.

            “The General’s waving at us,” said Allen.

            Nat moved the binoculars to look at the Martin Tower.  Sure enough, General Fury was waving his arms and making angry faces.  He thought it was too dangerous for them to be outside.

            “It’s not real,” she said.  “If it were real, it would be doing something.  They can fake it for a while with the guys outside, but that airship couldn’t miss.  Robin, shoot it.”

            “One arrow won’t bring that thing down,” he protested.

            “It won’t go down, it’ll go through,” was Nat’s prediction.  “Use one of the exploding ones.  Then we’ll see if it hits something.”

            “No… I don’t wanna waste those,” Robin decided.  He ran his fingers through the arrows in his quiver – the two scientists from Shrivenham had helpfully given the fletching a different texture on each type, so he could tell them apart without looking.  When he found the one he wanted, he fitted it to the string and fired it straight up.

            For a moment the white feathers were visible, and then it vanished against the looming dark shape of the Zeppelin.  It _had_ to hit _something_ , Natasha thought.  There was no way it could fail to, not with the airship so low and Robin Hood’s preternatural aim.  He’d hit a security alarm he could barely see from the other side of the castle, in the middle of the night.  He couldn’t possibly hit something that was actually _bigger_ than the proverbial broad side of a barn.

            They waited, and then there was a whistling sound.  The boomerang arrow returned to skitter across the metal roof panels and land, again, at Robin’s feet.  It had passed right through the Zeppelin, turned around, and come back.

            “We’ve gotta tell Fury,” Nat said.

            She hurried down the stairs back to the Great Hall, where the others were waiting to hear what she’d learned.  Nat would have gone right past them and left Allen or Robin to explain, but Sir Stephen caught her arm on the way by.  The metal gauntlet on his hand pinched painfully.

            “What did you see?” he asked urgently.

            “There’s nothing up there,” said Nat.  “The army outside… I think it’s all an illusion.”

            “I will see for myself,” Sir Stephen decided.

            So it was with Sir Stephen following that Nat dashed out the White Tower’s entrance.  The soldiers at the door moved to stop her, but she vaulted up onto one’s shoulders and slammed his head into the other’s, then leaped over their bodies while both were picking themselves up.  There were guards now on either side of the ladder up to the Martin Tower, too, but they’d see what she’d done to their cohorts, and got out of the way.

            “Stop firing!” she shouted as she got to the top.

            “You need to get your arse back inside!” Fury informed her.

            Nat stood on her tiptoes to look past him, over the wall.  The tanks in the intersection in front of the college appeared to be damaged.  Men in HYDRA uniforms were lying on the ground.  As far as anybody would be able to tell from here, the defenders in the Tower were winning – but once they took their eyes _off_ the enemy, it was obvious that something wasn’t right.

            “Look around!” said Nat.  “None of _our_ guys have gotten hurt!  They haven’t used the tanks, they haven’t dropped bombs from the Zeppelin.  They could if they wanted to, but they don’t because we’d know it’s a trick!  Stop firing!”

            General Fury turned his head, looking up and down the walls, and Nat saw the dawning realization in his face.  He grabbed his walkie-talkie again.

            “Cease fire!” he ordered.  “Everybody cease fire _now_!  Wait for my command!”

            The men on the walls stood down.  Sounds of battle continued to come from the street for several seconds, then faded away.  Dust settled – and the troops in the streets below stood still.  Nobody seemed to be re-loading, or carrying away the wounded.  Nat nodded to herself.  Like the colossus on Flotta, these were a sort of machine, and had very simple programming.

            “Cease this trickery!” Sir Stephen shouted.  “Show yourself!”

            The top of a tank opened, and the Red Death slowly rose out of it, as if standing on an elevator platform.  A black cape, like an opera cloak, billowed around him, and he wore a black helmet.  He was probably supposed to look intimidating, but Nat thought he looked like Darth Vader, and after a moment she decided to let herself laugh at him.  It would probably make him angrier than anything else she could have done.

            “Nice cosplay!” she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth.

            “Why do you bring us the ghost of an army, instead of a real fight?” Sir Stephen demanded.

            “Would you prefer a real fight, Rogsey?” the Red Death shouted back.

            “If you’re capable of it!” Sir Stephen said.

            “Very well!” the Red Death replied, and the entire army – including the Zeppelin and even the Red Death himself standing on the tank – shimmered and vanished.

            Fury cursed under his breath.  It was now obvious that Natasha had been right – there’d never been any army surrounding the Tower at all.  There were shell craters in Trinity Square Gardens and the A100, the Tower Pier had been destroyed and Tower Place and the tourist lineup area on either side of Pretty Wales were full of holes and spent ammo, but there’d been no damage to the Red Death’s army, because they’d never been there.

“Do you two always go around teasing megalomaniacal dark lords?” asked Fury.

            “I should like to see what he thinks he can bring against us,” Sir Stephen replied.  “He cannot have a real army, or he would have no need of an illusory one.”

            Then Natasha started to hear something rumbling.  At first it was very faint, more a buzz in the soles of her feet than an actual noise.  Then there was a faraway tinkling sound, as if of glass shattering.  For a moment she thought she might be imagining it, but then she saw Fury and the soldiers looking around in confusion, trying to find the source.  Several seconds passed while nobody could place it, then a man on the Bowyer Tower cried out and pointed to the southwest.  Natasha followed his finger.

            It was difficult to tell what was happening, because it was at a distance and on a grand scale, and therefore appeared very slow.  The Shard was crumbling.

            Nat’s first thought was relief that Southwark had been evacuated – there wouldn’t be anybody in there.  Sir Stephen had said that magic required bloodshed, and that the deaths of the people inside a building paid for knocking it down.  If there were nobody in the Shard or on the streets below, then the demons or whatever wouldn’t get anything in return for their trouble, and they’d probably been pissed about it.  A half-second later, however, a chill ran through her as she remembered that there _were_ people in the Shard.  Fury had placed his lookout and communications centre in there, where the people would be able to see the battle and give him information on the enemy’s movements.  Fifty people, maybe a hundred at most… would that be enough?

            Evidently it was, because the building was disintegrating before Nat’s eyes.  Was this just to deprive them of their lookouts, or was it a threat, a warning that the Red Death could do the same to the Tower if he chose?  No, he wouldn’t do that, Nat thought, because that would bury the Grail… could he move the rubble again by magic?  Or did he have another plan entirely?

            The Shard seemed to be falling in slow motion.  Pieces got halfway to the ground, then appeared to stop and float in the air.  What was happening?

            A lump of ice settled in the pit of Nat’s stomach.  The building wasn’t falling down at all – it was being re-shaped.  Who needed standing stones to create a colossus, when there was a building a thousand feet tall?

            As everyone watched, a million fragments of glass and strips of metal sculpted themselves into a gigantic humanoid figure, glittering in the lights of the city below.  The stone colossus on Flotta had been crude, just a rough outline of something like a man, but here there were so many pieces of debris that the beams and girders could twist themselves into organic shapes, as if the towering thing had actual bones and muscles but no skin to cover them.  Like the Flotta monster, however, it didn’t bother with a head.  It didn’t need to think.  It only needed to obey.

            “All right, you’re the ones who yelled at him!” Fury said to Sir Stephen and Nat.  “What in God’s name do we do with _that_?”

            “We blow it to bits,” Nat said grimly.  It had worked for the colossus at the refinery.

            The Shard colossus ripped its legs free of the foundations, shaking chunks of concrete off as if they were drops of water.  Then it waded out into the Thames, but instead of heading directly for the Tower, it went in the other direction.  What was it doing.

            “Trying to lead us away?” Fury guessed.  He changed channels on his radio.  “Hill, tell me you weren’t in the Shard.”

            “Negative,” said a woman’s voice.  “I was on my way back there, but plans seem to have changed.”

            “Call Northolt immediately,” said Fury.  “We need air support.  If that thing gets out of the evacuated area, it’ll kill thousands.”

            “Roger,” said the voice of Colonel Hill.

            The Shard reached the London Eye, and stopped.  For a few moments it seemed to study the immense wheel, then reached out and ripped it off its base with one hand.  With the other it grabbed the A-frame legs that had supported it, and pulled them up to clutch like a baseball bat… or like a sword.  With those in hand, it turned around and started back towards the Tower.

            “You civilians, get back inside,” Fury said.  “No arguments this time.  _Now_.”

            Nat started to do so, but realized Sir Stephen wasn’t following her.  He stood up straight and watched the Shard wading closer, then squared his shoulders.

            “A civilian,” he said.  “That word refers to a person who is _not_ a soldier, am I right?”

            “That’s right,” Fury agreed.

            “I am not a civilian.”  Sir Stephen put Henry the Eighth’s helmet on his head and opened the face plate so he could continue talking.  “That thing carries a shield.  It has no need of one, and that wheel cannot serve the purpose in any event – it carries it to mock me.  I asked the Red Death for something real, and he has sent me that.  Let me get my sword, and I will face it.”

            General Fury stared at him.  “You’re one guy.  You’re gonna fight that thing yourself?”

            “The colossus on Flotta nearly crushed you!” Nat agreed.

            “And I recovered,” said Sir Stephen.  “I will recover from this.  It will seek me out, and while I go to meet it, you can find a way to bring it down.”  He was looking at Natasha now – she was the one who’d found the Flotta colossus’ weakness.

            Fury nodded slowly.  “You distract, we destroy,” he said.  “Very well.  Good luck, soldier.”  He put a hand on Sir Stephen’s shoulder.

            “I have no need of luck,” said Sir Stephen, and closed the face guard again.  “This is my destiny.”


	23. As Above So Below

            Sir Stephen already had his shield on his arm, but his sword had been left behind in the armories.  He went back for it, and they arrived to find their companions gathered at one of the south-facing windows, watching in silent horror as the Shard colossus waded closer.  When Natasha and Sir Stephen entered the room, the others looked up as if waking from a daze.  Sam shook his head, and started gathering up his things.

            “We should head back to the basement,” he said.  “Before that thing gets here.”

            “Indeed.”  Sir Stephen picked up his scabbard and hung it around his waist.  “You will be safe there.”

            The others stared.  Between the sword and the use of _you_ instead of _us_ , it didn’t take them long to figure out what Sir Stephen intended to do.  It took them a few seconds longer to convince themselves he meant it.

            “Don’t be ridiculous!” said Sharon.

            “You can’t possibly fight that thing with a sword!” Sam agreed.

            “I’m not going out there!” Robin Hood said.  “I know my limits, thanks!”

            “The Colossus appeared after I challenged the Red Death to produce something real,” Sir Stephen told them.  “It is meant for me to fight.”

            Was that true, that this was his destiny?  Nat wondered.  Maybe he just felt bad that it was _his_ challenge that had spurred the Red Death to create the thing.  “Fury already had this conversation with him,” she said.  “He’s made up his mind.”

            Sir Stephen pulled his buckle tight and tucked in the strap end.  “My friends,” he said, holding out his arms to the entire group.  “It has been my great pleasure to know you, and if this is the last we see each other, I wish you to know that I have come to love you all.”

            Sam hesitated, and for a moment Nat thought he would try again to talk Sir Stephen out of it.  Instead, he just reached out and shook the other man’s hand.  “Thanks.  It’s been an adventure.”

            “Very much so,” Nat agreed.  She shook Sir Stephen’s hand as well, and Allen did the same without saying a word.  Robin Hood did his best to imitate the gesture, though he clearly didn’t understand it.

            Last was Sharon, who clasped Sir Stephen’s hand for a moment in both of hers, then stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

            “Oh,” said Sam, and turned away.

            Nat also averted her eyes, since the only other choice was staring – but after the initial moment of surprise was over, she remembered that every time the group had split up, Sharon and Sir Stephen had seemed to end up together.  Maybe the kiss wasn’t as completely out of nowhere as it seemed.

            After a long moment they parted, and Sir Stephen took Sharon’s hands and kissed the back of each of them.  She solemnly picked up his helmet from the bench he’d left it on, and put it in his hands.

            “I was not able to say a proper goodbye to my companions on my original quest,” Sir Stephen said, as he put the helmet on his head again.  “Or to Buckeye, or to Lady Margaret.  I am glad I have been able to say goodbye to you.”

            “Good luck, brother,” said Sam.

            The rest of them crowded into the doorway as Sir Stephen went back outside.  It was quite dark now, with the fog hanging in halos around the lights and making everything look glistening and spooky.  Soldiers had trained the spotlights at the top of the walls on the approaching Shard, and they glittered off the million panes of glass that made up its limbs.  Every time it put a foot down, the ground vibrated, and there was a constant rumble, a low groan of enormous weight mixed with a scrape of metal and a jingle of glass shards, as it moved.

            Above that, they could just barely hear Fury shouting orders to his troops.  “Sir Stephen is going to engage the, uh, Shard!  Everybody keep your eyes on it!  As soon as it turns its back, we blow it to bits – Jones says that’s gonna work!”

            Men took up positions with rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons.  Soldiers moved away from the Thames side of the fortress so they’d be out of the line of fire.  Everything focused on the glass and metal giant in the river.

            “Hill’s promised to have the RAF on standby!” Fury went on, “but we won’t resort to bombing unless we have no other options.  Rogsey!  Try to keep it in the Thames!  We want to fell it with a minimum of property damage!”

            That made sense enough.  They’d already destroyed the surrounding blocks of the city and didn’t want to do any more of it.  Natasha herself, however, was thinking about something else now – distractions.  The fake army had been a distraction for the real army.  Was the Shard a distraction, too?  Sir Stephen, standing on the wall by the Wakefield Tower, was focused on it to the exclusion of all else, and so was almost everybody else in the fortress.  It was going to take an enormous effort to destroy that thing, and in the mean time almost anything could happen elsewhere.

            Nat was pretty sure the Red Death wasn’t stupid.  He’d failed to kill them twice before, once by knocking a building down and once with his colossus… what he was doing now was merely a combination of tactics that had each failed on their own.  Surely didn’t believe in ‘third time’s the charm’, did he?  Did he figure it would go better this time because he was using _more_ of the same magic, or did he have another plan entirely?  Was he keeping their attention focused _outside_ the Tower because he actually had something going on _within_ it?

            Atop the inner wall, Sir Stephen widened his stance and held his sword high as the Shard approached.  It wasn’t as tall as the building itself had been, but it still loomed over him like a man over an insect, seven or eight hundred feet tall.  For Nat to see Sir Stephen challenge it was both petrifying and at the same time gave rise to a terrible urge to laugh.  The fight could only possibly end in him being crushed, or perhaps torn apart.

            Now there was a thought.  Natasha had _seen_ Sir Stephen recover from injuries that would leave anyone else dead or permanently disabled, but what would happen if the Shard literally ripped him in half?

            The colossus paused in front of the Tower, and although it had no head, it somehow displayed enough body language to give the impression it was staring down at this tiny man in puzzled disbelief.  It was like a scene from a nightmare, Nat thought… what the hell was he _thinking_?

            One of the soldiers on the Tower Green hefted a Jericho missile launcher to his shoulder and fired it.  The projectile roared over Sir Stephen’s head, and didn’t even have enough time for the warheads to separate before it impacted the Shard’s chest.  There it exploded, tearing a hole big enough to drive a double-decker bus through.

            The Shard staggered backwards and caught itself by dropping the big wheel and grabbing the Tower Bridge, its mitten-like hand crushing the upper walkway where Allen had been standing on lookout the previous night.  After a moment in which it seemed dazed, it righted itself and stood up straight.  Again through body language alone, it seemed to look down at the damage, then shrug and square its shoulders to get back to the task at hand.  It raised its makeshift sword, and swung it in slow motion.

            Sir Stephen brought his shield up over his head.  There was no way, Natasha thought.  The frame from the London Eye was doubtless designed to be as light as possible, but it would still weigh many tonnes.  Swung with that much force, it would crush Sir Stephen at once and probably take out the wall beneath him.  She braced herself, horrified but unable to look away.

            The frame hit the shield, and stopped cold.  The force was transmitted down Sir Stephen’s legs and cracked the masonry he was standing on all the way down to the ground – but Sir Stephen himself somehow stood unharmed.  He thrust his sword between two strips of metal in the Shard’s hand, and used that as a lever to vault himself up onto it.  Once he had a hold, he began climbing up to the elbow.

            The Shard tried to squash him with its other hand, like a person swatting a fly – but like a fly on an arm, Sir Stephen was so tiny in comparison that he was far faster.  He hit the elbow with the edge of his shield, sending bits of glass and metal flying, then grabbed a piece of rebar dangling from the damage and swung out of the way, coming back to hit the Shard again from the other direction.

            Nat realized she’d stopped breathing, and had to force herself to start again.  So that was his plan, she thought.  If the army couldn’t blow the thing apart, Sir Stephen himself would just keep chipping away at it until there was nothing left.

            Meanwhile, the men on the ground were preparing more surface-to-air missiles.  The second launch hit the Shard in the arm, bare metres below where Sir Stephen was clinging to its shoulder.  Its arm, still holding the A-frame legs, dropped into the Thames with an impact that shook the ground.  Stones fell from the cracked wall, and the splash doused City Hall.

            The Shard picked itself up and examined the damage again, and then its entire surface began to slide and contract.  After a moment it had rearranged itself into a slightly smaller but more complete version.

            It _could_ be destroyed, then.  They would just have to do it bit by bit.  The colossus on Flotta must not have had time to re-shape itself as the fire and water blew it apart, but the Shard was simply too big.  Anything that could take it out all at once would also annihilate central London.

            “Where is he?” Sharon asked, moving from window to window as she tried to spot Sir Stephen.

            “I can’t see him,” Sam complained.  “I think he fell in the water.”

            Allen and Robin were hanging back, away from the windows.  Allen was sitting quietly, staring at the floor, but Robin was pacing like a caged bear, and Nat realized she knew exactly how he felt.  She, too, preferred to be involved in things herself, rather than sitting and waiting for somebody else to handle it.  In Robin’s case it was because he was used to looking after himself in the woods.  In Nat’s it was because she’d been taught to work alone, without allies and without relying on any aid or backup.  Trusting the army and Sir Stephen to handle it while they sat inside was foreign to both of them, and made them feel twitching and impotent.

            There was nothing Nat could say to help Robin feel better about it, though, so instead she went over to Allen.  He had a discarded replica halberd in his hands, not because he could have used it, but simply because it was something to hang on to.  He turned it over, and then over again, still looking at the floor tiles.

            “Are you okay?” Nat asked.

            Allen reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose.  For a moment Nat thought he’d been crying, but he hadn’t – he was just very tired and very, very frightened.

            “Natalie… Natasha,” he said.  “If… if what you’ve said is true, I’ve only been alive for a few days, and now I’m probably going to die here.  I don’t… what was the _point_?”

            Nat didn’t have an answer to that.  She thought for a moment, then asked, “what’s the point for any of us?  We’re alive for a little while and then we die.  Someday the sun will go out and the earth will freeze over, and nobody will ever know we were here.  There’s no point.  We just _are_.”

            Allen nodded and heaved a sigh.  The Tower shook again with another impact, although without looking outside Nat couldn’t tell if the military or the Shard had been the cause.

            “There he is!” Sam said.  “There he is, Sharon, he’s alive!”

            Nat glanced over her shoulder, but then turned away again.  Sir Stephen could hold his own.  She sat down next to Allen and took his hand.

            “Scientifically they say the purpose of life is to pass on our genes,” Allen said miserable.  “To raise our children and give them a chance of survival.  I haven’t even done _that_.  I remember doing it, but it’s all fake.”

            Nat gave his fingers a squeeze.  “I don’t know if this helps, but I had Dr. Hughes do a paternity test,” she said.  “Genetically you _could_ be my father.”

            “Genetically isn’t the point, is it?” he asked.  “The point is supposed to be that your Mom and I created this little life between us and tried to give it the best of everything we could… but we _didn’t_.  Your real parents just left you, with people who treated you terribly, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  Everything I remember giving you was fake, and now that I’m here with a chance to do something for real, I’ve messed it up every time.  I didn’t help you on Flotta, I stabbed poor Robin when you had it under control, and I didn’t warn you about the guards in time.”

            “You tried your best,” said Nat gently.  “That’s all any parent can do, right?  Try their best.  Anyway,” she added, trying to sound more businesslike, “we’re not going to die.  We’ve got the whole British army out there _and_ Sir Stephen, who’s an army in himself.  Nobody’s going to die and when this is over, you can…” she stopped.  What _could_ he do?  Could he go back to Manhasset and just live?  Could she got with him?  Could _he_ stay _here_?  Could they ever talk to one another again, knowing it was all founded on something Nat made up?  Would he simply vanish, as she’d worried he might?

            The Tower shook again.  A shower of plaster dust fell from the ceiling, and Robin Hood brushed it off his shoulder.  “Are they shooting _at_ us?” he asked.

            Nat looked up.  That particular impact _had_ felt very close to him, as if it had been within the Tower grounds… yet it was also less intense than the Shard taking a step or the army firing a shell.  What had just happened?

            “Where’s the Shard monster?” she asked.

            “Still in the river,” said Sam.

            “They’ve gotten another arm off it,” Sharon added  “I think it’s getting ready to shrink again.”

            Nat closed her eyes and tried to replay the moment of impact in her mind.  It was almost as if it had come from _below_.  “Everybody,” she said, “grab a weapon and follow me.”

            She picked up a short sword from a line of them on a table – this was a replica, so it was not sharp, but it was heavy enough to inflict some serious damage regardless.  Robin had his arrows, and Sharon her gun.  Sam pulled a battleaxe off the wall.  Allen looked around nervously, unsure that he really wanted a part of this, then steeled himself and gripped the halberd he’d been playing with.

            Having thus armed themselves as best they were able at short notice, they started down the steps to the basement.

            Halfway there, the building vibrated again.  This was from an outside impact, but it was followed almost immediately by another _inside_ one, underscoring the different feel of the two.  Something was definitely going on directly beneath their feet.

            “If he knocks the building down we’ll be crushed,” Sharon said.

            “He won’t,” said Nat.  She was sure of that now – the Red Death could use the Shard to knock down the White Tower easily.  The fact that he _hadn’t_ , that he was wasting it fighting Sir Stephen, demonstrated that it was just a ruse.  Besides, this didn’t feel like the hospital falling down.  That had been a persistent rumble that got worse and worse, building until the structure was shaken right off its foundations.  These were single impacts, as if somebody were blasting below.

            “He’s keeping our attention focused _outside_ the Tower, with the army and the Shard,” Nat said.  “Meanwhile, how were _we_ trying to get the Grail out?”

            “By tunnelling!” Sam exclaimed.  “Bastard’s gonna come up through the floor!”

            There was another impact from below, this one louder and closer.  They ran down the rest of the steps as fast as it was possible to go in the tight, spiralling space.  One the lower level they emerged into the small hall, just in time for yet another blast.  Nat turned on a flashlight, and by its beam she saw dust billow up and floor tiles heave.  The Red Death couldn’t come up into the Chapel itself, because the Grail itself was in the way.  But having gotten in, they were still going to have to get it out somehow, and it was too big to fit through the doors…

            They must have a plan, but whatever it was, that plan would require that the Red Death and his men _reach_ the Grail first.  There was only a very narrow door into the Chapel – the type that was common in castles because, as Nat had told her classes and read in a dozen textbooks, they were easy to defend.  A few men could keep back an army, if the latter could only reach the door one at a time.

            She ran for the doorway, skirting the heaven centre of the floor, and took up a position in the doorway.  “We have to keep them out of the Chapel!” she said.

            The others joined her.  As Robin Hood leaped over the place where the floor was moving, a couple of tiles broke away and slid to the sides, and a hand reached through.  Robin pulled an arrow out of his hip quiver and jammed it into the hand.  This wasn’t an ordinary arrow, but one of the electrical ones the scientists from Shrivenham had made for him.  The shock went off, and somebody screamed.  The hand vanished back under the floor, and Robin pulled his arrow out.

            In the Chapel, Sharon and Robin, who had ranged weapons, took up position on either side of the door.  Nat, meanwhile, lifted one of the pieces of Dunbar Plate that was still lying across the Grail pit.  The plate wasn’t designed to be bulletproof, but it would probably take at least a few hits.  Sam helped her to prop it across the doorway, making a barrier about three feet high.  They added the second and third plate in layers,

`           “That won’t keep them out!” Allen protested.

            “It’s not meant to,” said Robin.  “It’s a _pavise_.”  That was the name for a shield used by crossbowmen, hammered into the soil in front of them to give them cover during the time-consuming process of turning a windlass to draw the string.

            The two shooters stood on either side of the door, ready to fire.  Sam, Nat, and Allen, with their edged weapons, crouched behind the makeshift _pavise_ to take care of any that got through.  The floor heaved again.

            “ _We’re dead, we’re dead_ ,” Allen sang under his breath.  “ _We’re all going to die_ …”  His voice was shaking.

            “If we die, we die doing something important,” Nat told him.  “This is… that thing,” she pointed at the Grail, “is the enemy of _truth_.  Ever since this got started, _truth_ hasn’t meant anything anymore because people can just make it up.  We’re fighting for the _truth_.”

            Zola had said that truth was something people made up anyway, and in a certain sense that was true – nobody alive actually _knew_ what had happened in 1066, so they had to guess, based on the writings of people who might well have been lying.  Once historians and archaeologists had figured out the _real_ truth, though, they could learn from it.  Nat had been raised with the idea that her missions were more important than her life.  She’d had close brushes with death in the name of lies and manipulation, but _truth_ … _truth_ was something worth dying for.

            More tiles moved as the hole in the floor grew.  A man hauled himself up out of it, and Robin fired the shock arrow again.  Its charge was spent, but it was still sharp, and it hit the man in the neck, severing the left carotid artery.  The man grabbed at the shaft, blood bubbling up out of the corners of his mouth, and then slid back down into the hole.  A third one came up, and Sharon shot him in the forehead.  He, too, fell back on top of his fellows.

            This would work for now, Nat thought – they could just bury the tunnellers in dead bodies.  Sooner or later, though, Sharon and Robin would run out of ammunition and then they would have to actually defend the doorway.  She wasn’t sure how long they could do that for.  They were going to need help…

            But there _was_ help, wasn’t there?  Nat was used to working by herself, as was Robin, but Sharon, Sam, and Sir Stephen all came from environments where backup was available.  The whole army was out there.  They didn’t have to do this alone, but for help to come, one of them was going to have to go and get it.  Who could be spared?

            There was only one logical answer.  Nat grabbed Allen’s arm.

            “Dad,” she said.  “Go for help.”

            He stared at her.  “What?”

            “They can only come out one at a time right now.”  She pointed to the hole in the floor.  “Sharon and Robin can keep them from getting to you.  Run upstairs and tell General Fury what’s happening down here, and ask for help!  We can hold them off for a few more minutes.”

            “I…”  He glanced at the hole in the middle of the small hall.  Hands were pulling more tiles away from the edges of it.  Robin shot another man as he tried to climb out, and this one fell forward and lay there, until a comrade grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him back down.

            “Go!” Nat urged.  “Quick!”

            Allen took a deep breath, then climbed over the _pavise_ and took off running.  He skirted the growing hole, tripped and fell, and was still in the process of getting up when another HYDRA soldier came crawling out.  Sharon shot the intruder in the back of the head and he fell, his arm landing across Allen’s legs.  Allen shrieked like a child and ran the rest of the way to the spiral staircase by scrambling on all fours, never looking back.  He vanished around the corner up the steps, and was gone.

            The rest of them steadied themselves.

            “Don’t leave the doorway,” said Sam.  “When you’re defending a narrow passageway the point is not to break formation.  Like the Spartans at Thermopylae.”

            Sharon ducked down behind the _pavise_ to re-load her revolver, and the next man out of the hole seized the opportunity.  He raised a repeating rifle, and the group had to quickly duck behind the stone walls or the metal barrier to get out of the way of the spray of bullets.  They peppered the Dunbar plate, almost knocking it over on top of Sharon.  More pitted the sandstone wall on the other side of the chapel basement.

            “Those things are so fast, it’s cheating!” snarled Robin, apparently unaware that the French had once said the same thing of English longbowmen.  He fired off another arrow, then ducked out of sight again.

            There were nine or ten HYDRA men down by the time the first actually made it to the doorway, by using the dead body of a smaller colleague as a shield.  He dropped the corpse and raised his own gun, but Sam swung his axe and knocked the weapon out of his hands.  Before the man could recover, , Nat had thrust her short sword into his gut.  He staggered backwards and fell.

            They took down several more.  Robin Hood ran out of shock arrows and had to start using the exploding ones.  They blew up with much more force than Nat expected, taking arms and legs off the men they hit.  Sharon got her gun re-loaded and stood up again, but by then, the HYDRA guys had stopped coming.  Nat tried to count the bodies on the floor, but before she could, the hole itself began to glow pale purple, and the Red Death rose out of the middle in the same way as he had out of the illusory tank.

            Robin Hood immediately shot off the last of his exploding arrows, but it went right through and hit the wall on the other side of the room, bringing down a shower of plaster dust and dislodging a couple of stones, which crashed to the floor at the base of the staircase.  Nat heard Robin swear as the Red Death vanished – it had been another illusion.  Nat just hoped the blast hadn’t destabilized the staircase.

            Then the air in the room shimmered, and suddenly men in black HYDRA fatigues were _swarming_ out of the hole in the floor like ants out of a hill.  Nat felt her insides twist.  _Now_ they had a problem, because there were probably real ones in there, but it was impossible to tell which they were.  Any shot fired might be wasted, but if they _didn’t_ shoot, the real men would have a clear path to the Grail.  Sharon and Robin both understood this as well, and looked to Nat for guidance.  She had none to offer.

            The first one to come at them was real.  He hopped the Dunbar plate and turned around to fire at them, but Nat dropped to a squat and kicked his feet out from under him, and Sam brought his axe down on the man’s neck.  The next several were illusions, vanishing as soon as they reached the _pavise_ , but another real one made it to them and grabbed Robin’s bow.  Robin kneed him in the crotch and Nat hit him in the head with the handle of her sword.  He crumpled.

            Nat tried to stab the next guy, but he vanished – and right behind him was a real one with a handgun aimed at her.  She moved, but he fired, and she felt the impact as the bullet hit her in the upper thigh.

            It wasn’t the first time Natasha had been shot.  She did not scream, and she did not fall over.  She grabbed the top of the _pavise_ and lowered herself carefully to the floor, while Robin Hood fired one of his remaining arrows – he only had two now – at the guy who’d done it.  Sam knelt down beside Nat, tossing his battleaxe aside, and pulled his shirt off to make a tourniquet.

            “Don’t bother,” Nat said, pushing him away.

            “If I don’t, you might bleed to death,” said Sam.  “I was a field medic, don’t forget.  I can…”

            “No!” Nat insisted.  “Remember what _I_ said?  If somebody’s hurt, the rest of us have to carry on!  That includes me.  The Grail is the most important thing.”

            The whole Tower suddenly shook again, as if something heavy had hit the ground very, very close to it.  Nat could have sworn she heard the glass rattle in the windows.  Some of the HYDRA guys stopped and looked up in concern as well – Sharon shot four of these in quick succession, and they all turned out to be real, while the ones who ignored the blast were illusions.  Then there was a second, even worse impact, accompanied by a thunderous rumble that physically knocked several people, including Sharon herself, off their feet.  Sam dragged Nat over to the back wall of the chapel, facing the apse, and from there she could see shadows flickering across the little window as objects fell.

            “It’s actually happening,” she said to herself.  The White Tower was going to collapse, and they would all be buried in the rubble.  That was fine, she decided, as long as the Grail was buried with them.  When this was all over the British government could have it permanently entombed in a giant block of concrete, like Chernobyl, so that nobody could ever get at it again.

            The barrel vault in the ceiling began to crack.

            The next sound from outside was an incredibly loud, incredibly close explosion, followed by an even _more_ deafening sound of crackling and shattering.  The falling objects Nat could see changed from boulders and blocks to long twisted shapes and glittering fragments of glass.  The Shard had entered the Tower grounds.  Maybe they’d finally destroyed it.  Maybe they hadn’t.  Either way, the debris would help to bury them, sealing the Grail in.

            Then she heard a softer, closer sound: metal clanking against itself and stone.  A moment later, this was followed by a familiar voice.

            “Red Death!” shouted Sir Stephen.  “I have come for you!”


	24. Lord of the Tower

            Natasha sat up, though doing so hurt so much her vision flashed white, and peered over the propped-up layers of Dunbar Plate.  There was Sir Stephen.  He had just emerged from the spiral staircase, sword and shield in hand.  He was bloodied and bruised, the visor was missing from his helmet and Henry the Eighth’s five-hundred-year-old parade armor was scraped, dented, and broken beyond all hope of repair.  Even so, he had his weapons, he was on his feet, and he clearly did not intend stopping.

            The HYDRA men turned their guns on him and fired.  Sir Stephen ducked behind his shield and let the bullets bounce off, then shouted out a wordless battle cry and dove into the fray.

            Sir Stephen alone was hardly the army, but then, Nat thought, the army wouldn’t have fit down here.  They would have had to come down the stairs one at a time.  The HYDRA guys had only their hole in the floor for access, and now they were having to fight on both sides.  Maybe, just maybe, Sir Stephen and the others stood a chance of holding them back.

            Sharon seemed to think so.  She continued to fire, but Robin Hood got down behind the _pavise_ and counted his arrows.  “Out of the normal ones… a couple of the bang ones but I can’t use those in here… no more zappy ones… and the boomerang.”  He held the boomerang arrow up and looked at it for a moment, then slid it back into the quiver and took out a long knife instead.  “Guess I’m down to thins.”

            He took a deep breath, then stood up and vaulted over the _pavise_ to enter the melee.  Sharon then took her turn to kneel and re-load her gun, but once she’d done so, she handed it to Nat.

            “Trade you,” she said.

            “Thanks,” said Natasha.  The sword was no more use to her with her bleeding leg, and the gun would allow her to keep fighting.  She propped herself up for a view over the barrier, and watched the men, trying to figure out which ones were real.  The ones shooting at Sir Stephen must be, she decided, because if they weren’t it would be obvious when their bullets went right through his indestructible shield.  She picked off a couple more with that for her guide, then came up with a better way.

            “Look at their feet!” she shouted.  The illusory soldiers didn’t have to pick their way around the bodies of fallen comrades.  The real ones had to watch where they stepped.

            That helped a bit.  Robin cut a man’s throat with his knife, and scooped up his gun when he dropped it – but his first attempt to fire it went badly.  He held it as if it were a crossbow, and did not brace it against his shoulder to absorb the recoil.  It was sheer good luck that he managed to shoot one of the soldiers instead of one of his friends, and in the process he knocked himself over.  By the time he picked himself up, there was a man standing over him, ready to shoot him in the face.  Robin looked to his left, and there was an arrow sticking out of a body.  Robin yanked it out and used it to stab the man threatening him in the belly.

            The battle went on.  Nat’s head soon started to swim.  Despite Sam’s improvised tourniquet, she was losing a lot of blood, and with her adrenaline up and her heart beating fast her body was actively working against its own survival.  The word began to drift before her eyes, until she could no longer see to aim.  She was fighting to stay conscious.

            Robin went down first.  Nat didn’t see who shot him, but she saw him fall, and one of the HYDRA men kicked him out of the way.  He was still breathing, but did not try to get up.  Sharon was covered with blood, although since she was still on her feet it probably wasn’t hers.  Sam had lost his axe but had picked up a rifle from one of the fallen enemies.  Sir Stephen’s sword arm was hanging limply by his side, but he was using the edge of his shield to hit people, and it was a fairly lethal weapon in itself.  Motion in the staircase kept catching Nat’s eye and she expected more people to run out and join one side or the other, but it didn’t happen.

            There was a smashing sound outside, followed by a tremendous explosion.  The Tower shook.  More rocks fell past the window, burying it and shutting off the outside light entirely, leaving only the infernal red glow of the Grail.  Allen Jones came staggering out of the staircase, directly into the arms of three HYDRA men who forced him to the ground and frisked him for weapons.  Before Natasha could wonder what he was doing there, more metal and glass came tumbling down the spiral staircase and into the room, cutting it off from the surface.  There must have been something left of the Colossus after all.

            Somebody grabbed Nat by her arms and dragged her out of the doorway into the back of the chapel room, and a moment later Sam was dumped next to her, unconscious and with blood in his hair.  Sharon was forced to the ground on the other side of Sam, and Robin Hood, now obviously bleeding from the re-opened arrow wound in his side, was pushed into her lap.  It took six men to carry Sir Stephen into the room.  Despite a broken collarbone he was struggling every step of the way, until they threw him into the corner.  He landed headfirst and lay still, possibly concussed.

            The HYDRA men moved the plates of the bullet-riddled _pavise_ and leaned them against the wall, and one of them tore down the horseshoe and ivy that were still around the door.  Several moved into position to guard the prisoners, who’d been stripped of their weapons by now.  All that was left was the boomerang arrow in Robin’s quiver, and Robin was in no shape to use it.

            They weren’t going to be able to fight their way out like they had on Flotta, Nat thought.  They were trapped down here, wounded and exhausted.  This was it.

            Somebody pushed Allen to the ground beside Natasha.  He looked at her with an apology in his eyes, but she smiled at him.

            “Thanks,” she said quietly.  “You did good.”

            “You…” he pointed at her leg.

            “You couldn’t have stopped that,” she said, and repeated, “you did a good job.”  If they were all going to die, he needed to feel like he was dying having accomplished something.

            Finally, with the prisoners secured and the room open to faerie folk and humans alike, the troops stood aside from the door to let the Red Death in.  He was not so dramatically dressed in real life.  Rather than his billowing Darth Vader cloak, he was in a suit and tie and a long black coat, all of them spotless despite having burrowed his way up from under the ground.  Or maybe he hadn’t… maybe he’d just needed his men to do it, so that they could take down the horseshoes and he and Zola could teleport in.

            Zola was trotting along behind his master, rubbing his hands together eagerly.  “Here it is!” he proclaimed.  “It’s yours!  I have fulfilled the terms of my contract!”

            The Red Death stepped into the middle of the floor space and looked down at the Grail.  Nat was behind him, so she couldn’t see his face, but now that the fight was over it was eerily silent.  She could hear his breathing, and watched his shoulders move as he inhaled and then let it out again slowly.  It was as if he were breathing in the scent of victory.

            “Take it, Master,” Zola insisted, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an impatient child.

            The Red Death held up a hand.  “Not yet,” he said.

            “Why not?” Zola asked.

            “Your terms are finished when the Grail is in my hand,” the Red Death said thoughtfully.  “Then you will be free to do as you like.”

            “Yes,” Zola said.  “So go and take it!  I don’t think you’re going to leave it behind just to spite me.”

            “Indeed, I’m not,” the Red Death said, “but as long as you’re still bound to my orders, answer me this: if I were to go up and put my hand on that stone, what would happen next?”

            The kobold grimaced, as if in pain.  “I… I…” he stammered.

            “Tell me the truth,” the Red Death said.

            “It w… it would… it would d-d-destroy you,” said Zola, the words coming out through his teeth as if he were fighting to keep them in.

            “And you would let me to do it, in order to have your revenge on me for tricking you into my service,” the Red Death observed with a soft chuckle.  “How do I avoid that fate?”

            “You must keep a shield of precious metal between it and you,” said Zola.  “Iron will block it completely, as it contained the fragments the druids made, but gold, silver, or copper will allow you to wield it.”

            The Red Death nodded.  “Go and touch it,” he told Zola.

            “Master!” the kobold protested.

            “You were planning to let _me_ touch it and be destroyed,” the Red Death said.  “And since I don’t intend to do that, I have no doubt you’re already thinking of other ways to kill me.  That’s how you creatures are.  Go and touch the stone.”  He pointed to the Grail pit.  “I want to watch.”

            Zola approached the pit as if he were being dragged on the end of a string, taking tiny, shuffling steps.  With his teeth gritted, he reached out at the same time as he tried to lean away.  His fingers wiggled in the air for a moment, then brushed the corner of the upper Grail stone.

            As had happened with the Queen’s bag, the black liquid surged out to wrap around him like tentacles.  Zola, however, wasn’t a clutch purse – he could fight back.  He struggled and squealed and tried to squirm free, grabbing at the floor, but more and more fluid wrapped itself around his small body until it dragged him screaming into the pit.  A spray of blood came up, and then he was gone.

            “Interesting,” said the Red Death.  “My turn.”

            He raised his hand to his mouth, and bit into the lower knuckle of his thumb.  The bodies heaped outside gave a collective twitch, and for a moment Nat worried Sir Stephen must have been wrong about magic not being able to create life.  The corpses seemed to be sitting up or raising their hands.  Then she felt something tug on her earlobes, and her earrings, simple little gold studs, were pulled out of her piercings and floated away.  So did Sharon’s, and from the bodies in the Hall came wedding rings, tooth fillings, and bits of chain, whatever fragments of gold the dead men had on their bodies.

            All these pieces of metal gathered themselves above the Red Death’s hands, and formed into two wafer-thin sheets of foil, each the size and shape of the sole of a shoe.  They floated down to the ground in front of him, and he stepped onto one, then the other, before taking a great stride out into the pit.

            Nat tried to get up and stop him.  She got as far as one knee, but then two of the guards aimed guns at her head, and the pain in her injured leg became too much.  With her head spinning, she slumped back to the floor.

            She’d gone soft, she thought.  If she’d been shot in the leg during her Red Room training, the people in charge would have forced her to finish the day’s task before she got medical care.  She was _sure_ she was capable, she just couldn’t force herself to do it.

            The Red Death stepped onto the upper Grail stone.  Maybe it was Nat’s imagination – lying with her cheek on the stone floor didn’t give her the best vantage point – but his foot didn’t seem to go down far enough to meet it.  Instead, it seemed to hover a few inches above.  The black liquid flowed out, but rather than wrap around him and pull it in, it slid along the surface of the stone to make contact with he golden soles.  The light falling on the Red Death seemed to grow less, as if leaving him in shadow, and yet at the same time he began to glow dull red, just as the Grail fluid itself did.

            He began to laugh.

            All around them, there was the sound of stone grinding against stone.  The ceiling of the chapel basement slid open as if it were a stadium roof, and the blocks it was built from moved and morphed like drops of mercury.  The wall slid away to join the chapel with the rest of the building, and the walls rose up into a huge square tower full of windows, a vast, cathedral-like space a hundred feet high.  The bare Norman stone morphed into coloured marble in complex patterns, painted and gilded and carved in a riot of pseudo-Saxon imagery.  Watching it made Nat’s head hurt.

            The floor of the apse opened and a stone chair rose out, decorated with semi-precious inlays in knotted, Celtic-type designs of tree limbs and lurking animals that continued writhing and entwining like snakes even as the Red Death stepped towards it.  A canopy of black silk, embroidered with a heraldic motif of a skull and knot – not unlike the HYDRA logo that must have evolved from it – unfurled behind the throne.

            The Red Death’s modern suit and coat transformed into a long black robe twinkling with gold and silver embroidery.  A crown appeared on his head, glittering with gems, and a scepter in his hand.  A red silk cushion opened on the throne like a flower, and the Red Death sat down.

            “All hail,” he said with a smirk, “the once and future king!”

            The soldiers, now dressed in black surcoats over shining chain mail, knelt before him.

            It wasn’t that he was making himself King of England, Nat thought – it was that he was changing history so that he _always had been_.  She wondered how long before she stopped remembering otherwise.

            “Not _my_ king,” said Sir Stephen.  “Never _my_ king.”

            Sir Stephen had been barely conscious a minute ago, and was obviously still in some pain as he got unsteadily to his feet.  With his right arm broken he’d had to choose between sword and shield, and he’d chosen sword – the short one Natasha had been using.  He held it in his left hand and staggered towards the Grail pit, his armor clanking.

            The Red Death looked at him and laughed.  “Look at you!  You can barely walk!”

            “As long as there is breath in my body, I will stand between you and the crown,” Sir Stephen said.

            The HYDRA soldiers turned to point their guns at him, and then seemed surprised to find themselves holding crossbows instead.  Sir Stephen stabbed the first one in the stomach, hit the second over the head, and cut the throat of the third.  His injuries were, as always, healing before everyone’s eyes.

            “The crown is already on my head!” sneered the Red Death.  He waved a hand, and the three guards simply vanished – while the crown he’d mentioned a moment ago melted into a helmet with a crownlike motif around the top.  The rest of his clothing changed again, too, transforming into early medieval armor.  The Red Death had sat down in a robe, but he stood up in glittering chainmail and a golden breastplate, with arm guards and greaves decorated with gold buckles and all kinds of intricate leatherwork.  “I had planned to hang, draw, and quarter all six of you in front of a baying mob,” he said, “but I guess even the king of the world can’t have everything.”  He held up his arms on other side of him.  The scepter in his right hand transformed into a sword.  A second sword appeared in his left.

            Sir Stephen stepped onto the upper Grail stone.  Unlike the Red Death’s gold-bottomed shoes, Sir Stephen’s feet actually touched it.  Nat expected the black fluid to reach up and pull him in, but it didn’t, and she remembered that he was still wearing most of Henry the Eighth’s ridiculous parade armor.  Zola had said that iron would block the Grail’s influence.

            It wouldn’t necessarily block the Red Death’s swords, though, and he laid into Sir Stephen with both.  Sir Stephen blocked and thrust them aside, and hacked at the Red Death’s left arm.  He dented the other man’s armor, but as soon as he lifted the sword for a second strike, the arm guard repaired itself and grew thicker, with a pattern of scales.

            “Oh, that’s right,” said the Red Death.  “You’re still angry about your foolish friend, aren’t you?”

            He thrust at Sir Stephen with one sword while slicing with the other.  Sir Stephen dropped to one knee, avoiding the first blow and using his bad shoulder to block the second, perhaps on the theory that one functional arm was better than none.  For a moment he was frozen, his eyes closed and his teeth grinding, and Nat winced in sympathy.  She knew that feeling, when something hurt so badly the entire universe went white and no movement was possible.  Then he was back on his feet, again attacking the Red Death’s arm.

            The Red Death avoided the blow and spun around.  Sir Stephen dived through his legs and came up behind him – between him and the throne.  There, he sprang to his feet and attacked again.  They traded a few more blows, but Sir Stephen was still a wounded man fighting one who could heal his own injuries as soon as he noticed them.  They fought for no more that a minute before the Red Death knocked the sword out of Sir Stephen’s hand and kicked him in the stomach.  He fell and rolled to the edge of the Grail stone.  The Red Death kicked him again, sending him over the edge.

            The gap between the edge of the Grail stones and the side of the pit was no more than a foot, though.  Sir Stephen managed to wedge himself in it and began to crawl back up.  Nat wondered what on Earth he thought he was trying to accomplish.  Maybe it was just the principle of the thing.  Principle was something Natasha always had trouble with.

            The Red Death shook his head in amazement, then reached down and grabbed Sir Stephen by the metal collar of the armor.  He pulled him upright and held him out at arm’s length, and Nat realized he was using his left arm.

            “It’s only fitting that I break your neck with _this_ arm,” the Red Death said.  “Poetic irony or something.”

            Sir Stephen reached for his belt and pulled out the little ceremonial knife that went with the armor.  He plunged it into the Red Death’s shoulder at the joint of the latter’s armor.  The Red Death howled in pain and surprise, and threw Sir Stephen against the throne.  He hit it, knocked it over, and lay there still.

            If only somebody else were in any shape to _do_ something, Nat thought.  She couldn’t even sit up because of her leg, Sam and Robin were only half-conscious, and Sharon was buried under their inert bodies.  The only person who _could_ have done anything was Allen Jones.  Nat looked at him, and found him gazing back at her.  For a moment they just stared into each other’s eyes, then Allen nodded.

            That last arrow, the boomerang, was still in Robin Hood’s quiver.  Allen pulled it out and crawled forward.  While the Red Death flexed his shoulder to make sure it was healed, Allen went for a weak spot in his armor – the back of the knee.

            Stupid, thought Nat.  Now was hardly the time to go for a disabling blow.

            The arrow did have a sharp point on it.  Allen drove it in, cutting the hamstring, and as Nat had described, with that done the victim could no longer stand.  The Red Death fell to his knees – and his knees were covered only by leather.  Once again he healed his injuries within seconds, but by then hungry tendrils from the Grail had snaked up and wrapped around him.  He tried to peel them off as they slithered under his armor, into his mouth, into his ears.  They twined around his legs and u the shaft of the arrow Allen was still holding.

            Before Allen could let go, the tentacles of the Grail were slithering around his wrists.  They were going to pull _him_ in, too.

            Somehow, that was the moment when Nat found the strength to move.  Fighting the blinding pain, she lunged forward and threw her arms around Allen’s waist to pull him back, but the tug of the Grail was irresistible.  The Red Death vanished over the edge and was sucked in between the stones, and Nat and Allen were dragged forward as well.  The stone floor scraped her belly and knees, but then somebody grabbed _her_.  When Natasha looked back, Sharon was holding onto her ankles and Sam, pale-faced from loss of blood, was gripping her right calf.  They were using the weight of Robin Hood’s limp body to try to anchor themselves, but it wasn’t working.  Nat’s injured leg felt as if it were going to be physically torn from her body.

            The Grail fluid wound over Allen’s body and began to wrap itself around Nat.  It was icy cold, and yet the places it touched felt like they were burning, as if they would come up in blisters.  Maybe, she thought.. maybe she could _use_ it.  The Grail altered reality.  Maybe if she could just focus on a reality in which they all got out of this okay…

            The world began to warp and waver before her eyes.  The tower they were in changed shape several times, from square to octagonal to round and then back again.  The windows were empty, then they were stained glass, then they were at the top of a skyscraper with an alien-looking city spread out below them.  For a weird moment they were all dressed as superheroes: Natasha in black, Sharon in white, Sam in red, and Robin in purple.  Sam’s shirt was torn apart as he grew wings, which a moment later evaporated in an explosion of oversized feathers.  Then they were back in the stone tower as it fell down, only to build itself up again.  It changed from throne room to cathedral to dungeon to ballroom and back to tower again.

            “We’re okay!” Nat shouted, trying to force anyone, even herself, to believe it.  “We’re all going to get out of this okay!”

            Then the edge of Sir Stephen’s shield came down on the arrow shaft Allen was gripping.  It snapped, and so did the Grail fluid crawling up it.  The tendrils that had already surrounded Allen, Natasha, and the others let go and recoiled into the pit with such violence that they were all thrown backwards.  After that, there was only darkness and a deafening silence.

            The first thing Nat heard was her own labored breathing, and she realized her leg didn’t hurt anymore.  The reason it was dark was because her eyes were closed, so she opened them and sat up, and found that she was dressed in a ridiculous ballet costume: black tutu, sequinned bodice, and silk toeshoes.  The tulle was at least easy to pull aside for a look at her leg, though, and when she did there was no bullet wound.  Not even a hole in her pantyhose.

            Everybody else seemed to be all right, too.  Sir Stephen was dressed in the Saxon surcoat and mail he’d been wearing as a statue, and Natasha, who remembered it as black basalt, was a little startled to see it brightly patterned in red, white, and blue.  He took his helmet off, threw his sword aside – his right arm was fine now – and began helping the others up.  Sharon was in a white bodysuit with a plunging neckline, like some kind of comic book heroine.  Robin Hood was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel over a black t-shirt, and was shaking his head as if waking from a dream.  Sam’s clothes were in shreds, and there were scars on his back where he’d momentarily had wings.

            Allen Jones was wearing the same thing he’d been wearing all day.  He put a hand on Natasha’s back.

            “Are you okay, Ginger Snap?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” said Nat.  “How about you?”

            “I’ll live,” he said, and hugged her.  She hugged him back because in that moment, Natasha didn’t _care_ what was real and what wasn’t.  She didn’t even know what might still be real in the wake of whatever the Red Death had done – all she could see of the world around her was that they were still in the throne room he’d made out of the chapel basement, with the open Grail pit in the floor a few feet away.  But this moment was real, her holding the man who thought he was her father, with her friends all around her and all of them uninjured and going to live.  That much was real, and she was grateful for it.

            “I wasn’t telling you to do anything,” she said.  “When I looked at you.  I just…”

            “No, no, I was the only one who could,” said Allen, rubbing her back.  Nat realized that _he_ was reassuring himself _she_ was real, as much as she was doing for him.  That was so ironic she would have laughed, if she hadn’t been so tired.

            Sharon was unhappy with the low neckline of what she was wearing, so Robin gave her his flannel shirt to put on over it.  With some sidelong looks at the open Grail pit, the group of six limped out of the room, leaning on each other for support, and into the small hall where the entrance tunnel had been.

            The floor there was now complete, covered with patterned terra-cotta tiles, and there was no sign of the bodies of the dead HYDRA men.  They’d simply vanished, the matter of their bodies perhaps incorporated somehow into the new structure of the room, with tapestries on the wall and a ceiling ten feet higher than it had been.  The Red Death hadn’t cared about his followers at all, Nat thought.  After they’d spent a thousand years figuring out a way to resurrect him, he’d let them disintegrate in his quest for personal power.

            When they reached the top of the spiral staircase, they found that the top of the White Tower had been completely blown away.  The hall that had once contained the armories was open to the sky, which was turning yellow and pink as the sun rose.  The Grail tower the Red Death had made, six storeys tall, loomed over everything, surrounded by flying buttresses for support.  The curtain walls had gotten taller and thicker, and many of the castle’s outbuildings had changed a bit.  The moat was now connected to the Thames, and full of water.

            British soldiers were standing around confused, dressed in the uniforms of a dozen eras and countries, and there were wild animals wandering around the Tower grounds.  A polar bear was unconcernedly scratching itself on a bit of wall, and the men at the water truck, now dressed as Samurai, were handing a cup of water to a gorilla.  The ape accepted it and drank the contents, then handed it back for more.  A man dressed as a Napoleonic general was sitting on a bench rubbing his temples, while a sabre-toothed tiger rubbed against him the way cats do when they want to say that a particular human belongs to them.

            “Looks like you’ve made a friend, General Fury,” Natasha observed.

            Fury took off his bicorn hat and looked up at her.  He was now wearing an eyepatch instead of his glass eye.  “I hate cats,” he said, but reached out to scratch the top of the tiger’s head.  It purred.

            “What went on up here?” asked Sam.

            “We kept blowing bits off the Shard monster, but every time we did it just rearranged itself and got smaller,” said Fury.  “Then those bloody chicken wire sculptures came to life, and we couldn’t shoot the damned things because chicken wire doesn’t have any vulnerable spots.  We blew the dragon up with a rocket launcher but the rest just kept coming.  Sir Stephen ran off with Jones Senior, and the Shard knocked the top off the Tower trying to get at them.  We figured you were all dead, but then the whole world started turning inside out.”  He gestured around at the altered Tower layout and the animals, which at some point had ceased to be animated chicken wire and were now flesh and blood.  “Is that gonna happen again?”

            “We hope not,” said Nat.  “The Grail ate Zola and the Red Death, and all his followers seem to have vanished.”  The ones who’d broken into the castle, at least.  If HYDRA were still a living organization there must be others out there… she wondered what had happened to the ones still in the tunnel.  Had they, too, ceased to exist, or were they still down there, entombed in the earth?  “So for now, anyway, it seems to be over.”

            Fury nodded and sighed heavily.  “I need a holiday,” he declared.

            Robin Hood cleared his throat.  “Sorry,” he said, a bit louder than he needed to, “but can I borrow somebody’s mobile?  I gotta text my wife.”

            “Use mine,” Sharon said, pulling it out of a pocket in the thigh of her superhero costume.  She offered it to Robin, who blinked, and Nat realized he hadn’t heard her.  Then he smiled and accepted it.

            “Thanks,” he said.  The phone’s screen was shattered, but it seemed to work okay.

            “You remember?” asked Nat, touching Robin’s arm so he would know she was talking to him.  “I mean, you know who you are?”

            Clint Francis smiled weakly at her.  “Yeah.  Laura’s gonna kill me,” he said, but he was already typing in her number.


	25. Ever After

            More changes to the Tower grounds were visible as Natasha looked around.  The open excavation next to the base of the chapel apse was gone, although the mechanical digger was still sitting there waiting to continue working on it.  A blue velvet hat and robe of some sort were draped over the mechanical arm.  The hat had a few white feathers on it, and a raven was perched there, tugging on one as to see if it were edible.  Other ravens were back, too, Natasha realized, perched on the tree branches and turrets croaking to each other.

            That was a good sign, she decided.  England wasn’t due to fall today after all.

            “Can I ask you something weird?” she heard Sam say.  “Although, maybe it’s not weird… I’m not sure what weird is anymore, honestly.”

            “Certainly,” Sir Stephen replied.  “What is your question?”

            “If you don’t hear it, too, then this is going to sound crazy,” Sam said, “but… are the ravens talking?  Because they… they sound like they’re saying stuff like, _well, that happened_ , and _do you think they’re still going to feed us today_?”

            Everybody was quiet for a moment.  Nat still couldn’t hear any words in the ravens’ croaking, but she could hear the sound of somebody sobbing.

            “No,” Sharon said, “they’re just making bird noises as far as I can tell.”

            “Oh,” said Sam.  “I guess I really _am_ just crazy, then.”

            Nat approached the digger and opened the door of its little cockpit.  Professor Gates was sitting there.  He was now dressed in a white robe and black cowl, like a Cistercian Monk, and he had his face in his hands, bawling his eyes out.

            “Excuse me,” Nat said carefully, knocking on the window to get his attention.

            Gates raised his head and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, then gazed up at the soaring Grail tower and his chin trembled as if he were about to burst into tears all over again.  “Look at that!” he moaned, gesturing towards the tower.  “I mean, it’s very _pretty_ , but it’s not Roman, it’s not Norman, it’s not medieval… and everything that _was_ is just _gone_!”

            “I’m sorry,” said Nat.  Was that her fault?  She’d been so worried about whether any of them would live through this, she hadn’t spared a thought for putting the Tower of London back together.  But if she had… would it have gone back to the way it _was_ , or would it have arranged itself in the way she thought it _ought_ to be?  And if it had, how would they ever know the difference?

            That was the problem with a lie.  No matter how beautiful it was, it couldn’t teach you anything.  History was an ugly story, full of sickness and war and murder, slavery and conquest and rape.  But those who did not remember the past, who glossed it over with beautiful lies, were doomed to repeat it.

            “I’ll… I’ll get over it,” said Gates, hiccupping.  “That is… no, I won’t.  I’ll never get _over_ it.  But I’ll find something else to do.”

            Nat patted him on the shoulder and then stepped down again, wanting to give him some privacy.  The others were a few yards away, still looking around and listening and taking it all in.  Clint was sitting on the grass texting his wife, and as Nat watched he suddenly paused and shook his head hard, as if to dislodge something.

            “So…” said Allen, anxiously scratching his shoulder.  “What do we do now?”

            “I… I don’t know,” said Sir Stephen.  “As I said… I never planned past taking on the Red Death in battle.  That was the only certainty in my future, and it seemed foolish to think beyond it when I was not sure I would survive it.”  He might have been talking to Allen, but his eyes were on the mechanical digger, which Nat supposed was the nearest reminder of modernity.  Was he trying to cope with the idea that he was trapped in this strange future?

            They needed some humour, Nat decided.  “Well, I don’t know about anybody else,” she said, “but I feel like I could sleep for a week.”  The nearest horizontal surface was the digger’s shove, and she let herself tumble dramatically into it.  The swirl of her tulle skirt helped, and she didn’t care at all that the shovel was full of dirt that would get all over her outfit.  It wasn’t _her_ outfit anyway.

            “Hear, hear!” said Sam, and sat down on the grass.

            Nat hadn’t planned to lie there more than a couple of minutes.  She was picky about her sleeping arrangements – she had to be in a place where she could be sure nobody would sneak up on her.  Out here in the open, with nothing above her but sky, it just wasn’t going to happen.

            Then she felt something soft drape over her.  When she opened her eyes a crack, she saw that Allen had taken the robe down from the shovel’s arm and was now tucking her in.  He made sure the warm fabric was close around her so no cold air would get in, then gently brushed a few strands of hair away from the corner of her mouth and sat down on the digger’s caterpillar track to watch over her.

            She shut her eyes again and smiled to herself.  Natasha still wouldn’t actually fall asleep here, but in that moment, somehow, she felt perfectly safe. 

* * *

 

            A few days of recovery, both physical and psychological, would be necessary for the people who’d been involved in the Battle of the Tower.  A little more was going to be needed for the wider city of London.  The entire City borough, along with parts of Southwark and Lambeth, had reverted to a quasi-medieval state, with cobbled streets and stone and timber buildings.  The Tower Bridge was still standing on the far side of the Thames in its Victorian form, but the near side had been replaced by something that resembled a church spire, with a huge set of wooden cogs pulled by oxen to raise and lower the bascules.  Further up the river, London Bridge itself in true medieval style had houses built up both sides of it.

            A lot of rebuilding was going to have to happen very quickly.  The first thing to do would be to re-lay the vanished utility pipes and electrical wires, then re-pave the roads and get the underground working again so that the city would be able to function.  The Queen gave explicit permission for the Red Death’s buildings to be torn down and the materials re-used in whatever way the architects and engineers on the project saw fit.

            Natasha approved of that.  That was how this country had always worked.  The Stone Age peoples of Britain had built henges and barrows, which their Bronze Age successors had used as their own temples and burial sites.  Celtic tribes had built settlements, which the romans had turned into cities.  Roman temples had become Christian churches.  Villas had been turn down and the stones re-used to build monasteries, which had in turn been taken apart by Henry the Eighth to build palaces, which had since become tourist attractions and government buildings.  The history of Britain wasn’t just a history of immigration.  It was a history of _recycling_.

            Having given that order, the Queen had sent the soldiers home, while Fury and the ‘six heroes’ – as her Majesty insisted on calling them – were trucked out to Windsor Castle, an hour’s drive away.  The grounds were closed to tourists and press to give them some privacy, and then they were all left alone to recuperate in peace.

            Nat didn’t actually sleep for a week, of course, but she slept until well past noon the next day, and when she got up she took a very long shower and then sat on the window seat in her room – an _amazing_ room, with gilded moldings on the ceiling and brocade hangings on the walls – with a cup of tea, to look out over the courtyard.  A bit of misty rain was falling, but the sun was coming through the clouds, making it all glitter.

            There she prodded at her conscience a bit, to see what it would do.  Natasha had killed a lot of people yesterday – some on purpose, like the HYDRA men swarming out of the floor, and some perhaps by accident, if _she_ were the one who’d buried others alive in the tunnel.  Did she feel bad about it?

            Yes, to be quite honest, she did.  Every one of those men had been flesh and blood.  They’d all been born, had grown up, they had families and friends and pets.  They were not _nice_ people, or they wouldn’t have joined a group dedicated to finding a magical artifact they could use to conquer the world, but they’d been people, every last one of them.  At the same time, the alternative to fighting with them was to just let them have the Grail, and that could not be tolerated.  Nat had killed them because she had to save the truth.  She wasn’t sure yet if she’d managed that, but those killings had been necessary.  Unfortunate, but necessary.

            What about the Red death?  Was _he_ a person?  He’d come across as a sort of cartoon character, a mustache-twirling bad guy, but he must have a backstory, too.  Or did he?  He, like Sir Stephen and Allen, had been created by the Grail out of what people imagined about them.  Did that mean _none_ of them were real people?  That couldn’t be right.  Sir Stephen and Allen were people, and therefore the Red Death must have been, too.  He was a _bad_ person, a person who’d needed to be stopped, but a person nevertheless.

            That was the other thing about truth, she thought – it was always so damned _complicated_.  Nobody was all good or all bad.  Things had seemed so much simpler in the Red Room.  There’d been the Widows, who were the servants of the state, and their targets, who were the enemies of it.  One of the reasons she’d run away was because she’d come to realize that the truth was not so simple as that, or as it always looked in the movies.  Nat could _try_ to be a good person, but she never would be, for the same reason she would never truly be a _bad_ one.  That was, in itself, kind of a depressing thought.

            She got up with her empty teacup in hand, intending to find a servant to give it to, when there was a knock on the door.  Nat went and answered it, and found it was Allen Jones.  He was wearing striped pajamas, but she didn’t care about that – Nat herself was in a dark red dressing gown and a pair of fuzzy slippers.

            “Oh, you are up,” he said.

            “Yeah, I am,” Nat said.  “Have you knocked before?”

            “No,” Allen replied, though she suspected he was lying.  “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

            “I’m okay, I guess,” said Natasha.  “How about you?”

            “Okay, I guess,” he agreed.

            A moment went by in silence.  There was nothing to distract them now.  They had no tasks to immediately get on with, no convenient excuses to procrastinate.  The two of them were going to have to deal with each other.

            “You want to come in?” Nat asked.

            “I wouldn’t want to intrude,” said Allen.

            “You’re not intruding,” Nat told him.

            “You never liked me coming in your room,” he said.

            “That wasn’t me,” said Nat firmly, “and this isn’t my room.  This room probably belonged to some spoiled duke of whatever who died a hundred years ago and I doubt it’s been redecorated since.  I don’t have any underwear on the floor.  You can come in.”

            “Right, right.”  He stepped inside, but stayed awkwardly standing, just beside the still-open door.  “So, uh… now that you’ve saved the world, what are you going to do next?”  It was an attempt at a joke, to disguise the serious nature of the question, as well as the fact that it was, in its own way, a plea for help.

            Natasha sat down on the end of the bed.  “Well… I guess I’ll go back to work, unless the university has fired me for running off without requesting leave, in which case I’ll have to find another job.  My field is gonna be limited, though,” she admitted.  “My face will have been on the news by now… I might not be able to come up with a new cover.”  Thank goodness she had the Grand Duchess’ diamonds.  Lies were… they were never as good as the truth, but she needed them and she probably always would.  “What about you?”

            That was what he’d _really_ come here to talk about, and Natasha knew it – but she could also see, in the way he winced, that part of him had been hoping she wouldn’t ask.  “I don’t know,” he sighed.  “If I don’t have any legal ID or anything…”

            “I can come up with something for you,” Natasha said.  It wouldn’t be hard.  “I’ve got some money I can give you, too, if you need something to get started.”  She’d searched for his address on Google Maps and sure enough, there was still no house there.  That was a bad thing for him, but did reassure her that she hadn’t inadvertently changed the world any _more_.  “Is that why you came here?”

            “No!  No, of course not,” said Allen quickly.  “I wouldn’t… well, I’ll take it if you’re offering, but I’m not…”   He stopped speaking and spent a moment clearing his head before taking a deep breath.  “I came here to ask what… what _we’re_ going to do next.”

            Of course he had.  And of course, Nat didn’t have an answer for him.  “What do you _want_ to do next?” she asked.

            “I want everything to be the way I remember it, but I can’t have that,” he said.  “What do _you_ want to do?”

            Nat didn’t know – but she had to come up with something.  “I want to help you,” she decided.  “You did your best to help _me_ and I know I wasn’t very nice to you, and I want to thank you for that.  But I don’t want to lie to you.  I’m not the daughter you remember, and I’m not going to pretend I am.”

            “That’s okay,” he said.  “I know I’m not the father you would have wanted, either.”

            He looked terribly sad about it and yet resigned, and Nat felt she had to say or do something to cheer him up.  “I think you might be the father _Sue_ wanted for me,” she said, “but I… you’re the closest thing to a family I’m ever likely to get, and nobody gets to pick their relatives.”

            “That’s true,” said Allen, with a relieved smile.  He must have been terrified she would reject him again.  “I don’t know what you’ve done in the past,” he added, “but I know what you’ve done since I met you, and… I hope it doesn’t sound patronizing, but I’m proud of you, Ginger Snap.”

            Nat wasn’t sure anybody had _ever_ told her they were proud of her.  The trainers in the Red Room had been _satisfied_ with her, but had never taken any actual _joy_ in what she did.  And people since then… well, she was an adult.  Nobody thought she needed to hear it.  Even she was surprised to find how badly she did.

            “You’re right,” she said, with a shake of her head.  “You don’t know me at all.” 

* * *

 

            It took a couple more days for them to all come out of their rooms and start to be social again.  The palace had plenty of books to read, a swimming pool and a snooker table and a private theatre, but nobody was very interested in any of that.  Sam spent a lot of time up on the balconies, feeding or watching the birds and swearing he could understand their conversations.  If the lot of them hadn’t just had their brush with the fantastic, Nat would have thought he was nuts.

            The rest of them mostly just sat in the drawing rooms or took walks around the castle and the grounds, lost in their own thoughts about the momentous events they’d been part of.  Nobody even attempted any contact with the outside world until suppertime on their third day at Windsor, when Sharon stepped away from the table to ring her bosses in Inverness.  She returned looking relieved, and dug into the meal she had barely touched before.

            “How’d it go?” asked Sam.

            “I told them I’d identified the man who killed Alexander Pierce but I couldn’t arrest him because he’s dead,” said Sharon between forkfuls.

            “And?” Sam prompted.

            “The chief said he’d let Mrs. Pierce know, and told me I’ve been granted a three-month sabbatical,” she replied, mouth full.  “Either he thinks my excuse was good enough, or he figures there’ll be a mountain of bad press if he fires me.  Apparently all our pictures have been in the papers.”

            “Great,” Nat sighed.  Among her many reasons for choosing archaeology, there’d been the fact that it was unlikely to ever make her famous.  Now it seemed she was going to be _very_ famous, whether she like it or not.  So much for lying low or establishing a new cover.  “I should probably call the university,” she said, “just to see if _I’m_ fired.”

            “I’m sure you’re not,” said Allen quickly.

            Nat gave him a mockery of a dirty look.  “You’re Dad-ing at me again,” she said, not _quite_ keeping her face straight.

            “I can’t help it,” he replied, with a slight smile of his own.

            After they’d eaten, Nat went back to her own room, dug her phone out of the drawer she’d hidden it in – with a priceless eighteenth century tapestry pillow stuffed in on top so she wouldn’t hear it if it rang – and called Dundee.  By this time in the evening the faculty would probably have all gone home.  The only person likely to still be working was the administrative assistant.

            Sure enough, after two rings Nat heard a familiar voice say, “Dundee University Archaeology.”

            “Hi, Sue,” said Nat.  “It’s me.”

            “ _Natalie_?”  Sue was astonished.  “Oh, my god, where are you?”

            “Windsor Castle,” Nat replied.  “I’m a guest of the Queen, if you can believe that.  She’s hiding us all from the media.”

            “I do believe it!” said Sue.  “I’ve spent the past couple of days refusing to give your contact information to all sorts of reporters and weirdos, including a man who said he used to work for the KGB.  We’ve been worried you were dead and nobody wanted to tell us!”

            “No, no, I’m very much alive,” Nat reassured her.  “I’m a little shook up, but I’ve survived worse.”  Hadn’t she?  She wasn’t sure how to rate this alongside her other experiences… they weren’t really comparable.

            “What about your friends?” Sue asked.  “And your father?”

            “They’re fine, too,” Nat said.  “I’m actually calling to find out whether I still have a job there.”

            “What?  Are you daft?” Sue wanted to know.  “Of course you do!  Nobody’s even _mentioned_ the idea of sacking you.”

            “Did you tell them what I told you?” Nat asked.  “About where I come from?”

            Sue didn’t answer right away, and Nat wished she could have seen the other woman’s face.  It would have told her what she was thinking.  “No,” she said finally, “no, I figured you’d rather I didn’t.  If anybody’s going to tell anyone about that, it ought to be you.”

            Natasha suspected Sue just hadn’t wanted to answer awkward questions about it.  She probably _should_ tell the various university officials who she really was, because it would doubtless come out sooner or later… but she would put it off a while, until she figured out the right way to go about it.  “Thank you,” she said.  “How’s your son, by the way?”

            “Oh, he’s fine, he’s fine,” Sue said.  “He’s been glued to the telly all week.  Is… is it all over now?” she asked nervously.

            “I hope so,” Nat said.  “I really do.”  She couldn’t promise, though.  Not with Mick O’Herlihy’s un-used Grail fragments still out there.

            “I’m so glad,” said Sue. 

* * *

 

            The day after, they all had tea together in the north corner of the East Terrace Lawn.  Sam fed bits of his watercress sandwiches to a pair of swans who had settled down next to him, occasionally scratching their heads or rubbing their necks as they ate.  They responded by leaning into his touch like kittens, and Natasha, who knew from personal experience that swans were bad-tempered birds, was waiting for somebody else to try it.  Nobody had yet – Sharon was busy telling Sir Stephen about various types of police evidence, which he seemed to agree was a much better way to determine guilt than by a due, and Allen was talking to Clint Francis.

            “What’s it like?” Allen asked.

            “Confusing,” Clint replied with a grimace.  Somebody had brought him some hearing aids and they seemed to help, although people still had to look at him when they spoke to him.  “I can remember these two completely different lifetimes, and I can _mostly_ keep them straight but there’s parts I’m not sure which of me they happened to.  Laura will be able to help me figure it out, but… I don’t know.”  He was quiet for a moment.  “I don’t feel like I’m exactly the same person anymore.”

            Nat touched his arm so he’d know she was talking to him.  “Can you still do the archery?” she asked.

            “I haven’t tried it,” Clint admitted, “but I think so.  I’m sure I’ve got more upper body strength than I used to.”  He jokingly flexed one arm.  “I’ll have to start working out so I can keep it!”

            Behind where they were sitting was a flight of steps, and at the top of it was a door.  A pair of guards were standing on either side of this, and they quickly straightened their backs as it opened.  Out came the Queen, with two of her great-grandchildren – a boy and a girl, both under six years old.  The kids’ eyes lit up at the sight of the people they’d been told were heroes, and they would have run forward to say hello if the Queen hadn’t held their hands firmly.

            “Not yet, poppets,” she said.  “Gran-Gran needs to have a word with them first.  I’m releasing you two into your natural habitat.  Go dig some holes or roll in the dirt or something – we wouldn’t want the gardeners getting bored!”  She shooed the little prince and princess towards the formal gardens, then plunged herself down in an empty chair.

            “Good morning, your Majesty,” said Allen respectfully.  The others all made polite greetings, while the Queen stuffed a jam tart in her mouth and washed it down with sherry.

            “Yes, yes, very nice,” she said.  “All right, I expect now that you’ve had a few days to rest, the first thing you want to know about is what we’re going to _do_ with that blasted thing.”

            Nat did indeed want to know what the fate of the Grail would be, but she’d been expecting to have to lead up to it.  She should have known better by now.  “We _were_ curious,” she said.

            “Well, the Tower’s closed for the time being, mostly while we tear that honking ridiculous spire down because it’s ‘architecturally unstable’ – not to mention a bloody eyesore,” the Queen said.  “Ugliest thing in London, and I don’t say that lightly!  As for getting rid of the Grail, the Prime Minister and I spent two days listening to completely ridiculous suggestions from all sorts of fools, until somebody finally gave us a number for an American who might know what to do with it.  We invited him to take a look, and he thinks he can come up with something smaller it put it in than sandwiched between those two slabs of rock.  He’s gonna make something that’ll fit in the boot of a car, he says, and then he’ll launch it off into space for us and make it some other planet’s problem.”

            “Are you sure he won’t try to keep it for himself?” Nat asked.

            “No,” said the Queen, “but we’re keeping a _very_ careful eye on him.  The Tower’s locked down like Wakefield.  Somebody told me,” she added, popping another jam tart into her mouth, “that the last time the Tower was used as a prison was in 1968, when the Krays were kept there.  I remember that.  Nobody told me at the time it would be a last.  You’d think it would have come up, that we’re planning on never doing this again.  We could have had a ceremony.”  She snagged the second-last tart, and Sam reached to grab the last one and break it in half for the two swans.

            The Queen frowned disapprovingly at him.  “They’re fat enough, you know,” she said around her mouthful.  “Anyway, on to the pleasant bits!  I’m making all of you knights.  That _does_ get a ceremony.  We’ll have it next month, and then maybe I can finally take my trip to Monte Carlo.  The Americans are to be granted citizenship for the occasion, since I know you colonials are funny about titles,” she added, with a nod towards Nat and Allen.  “Sir Stephen, since you’re already a knight, I’m giving you a seat in the Order of the Garter.”

            “Thank you, your Majesty,” said Sir Stephen gravely.

            “You have no idea what that is,” the Queen observed.

            “No, your Majesty,” he confessed.

            “It’s one of those chivalric clubs where we all wear funny hats and watch football together and pretend we’re still relevant,” she explained.

            “Like a modern-day Round Table,” Sharon added, to give Sir Stephen a slightly better impression of the idea.

            “It is my honour, your Majesty,” Sir Stephen said.

            “We’re also going to see about getting you a proper twenty-first century education,” the Queen added, “which I’m sorry, it’s going to be terrible, but you’ll be glad you suffered through it in the end.  Moving ahead,” she continued, “yesterday Parliament met again for the first time since the battle and after far too much palaver they’ve decided to introduce a bill for creating some kind of department for this sort of magical bullshit – though I’m assuming they’ll come up with a better name.  Nicky’s going to be in charge of it,” she added.  “I’m making him an Earl as soon as I pick an empty Earldom.  He says he doesn’t want it, but if he’s obstinate I’ll call his Mum on him.”

            She snatched up the last watercress sandwich before Sam could give it to the swans, and continued with her mouth full.  “Obviously we’re going to ask all of you to serve on it.  Dr. Jones and Sir Stephen, you two will be on call to travel to potentially hazardous sites to make sure nobody’s unearthed the end of the world.  The rest of you will be on call to deal with it if they do.  We would prefer that nothing like that ever happen again, or at least that it never happen on quite such a _scale_.”

            Nat wanted to protest that the odds of that were very low – after all, so far as they knew it had only happened once in recorded history.  She stopped herself, though, because she realized they didn’t yet know what other alterations the Red Death might have made while transforming inner London, not to mention what might happen with the other Grail fragments still out there, just waiting for somebody to tell a plausible lie.  Nat wondered what she’d done with her list of addresses.  Somebody was going to have to deal with those.

            “What do you say?” the Queen asked.  “Think you’re up to the challenge?  Because if you’re not, we’re gonna have a devil of a time finding anyone who is.”

            “I’d love to, your Majesty,” Nat said.  It would be an excuse to visit archaeological sites all over the country, and possibly another opportunity to defend the concept of truth.  It might also, ironically enough, offer her a measure of protection.  Her face was well-known now and Sue had said the KGB had called Dundee.  Maybe her enemies would think twice about coming for her when she was working directly for the crown, surrounded by friends who had successfully taken on a man who aspired to be a god.

            The others all agreed as well, and the Queen gave a satisfied nod.  “Good, good,” she said.  “Now that’s all out of the way, is there anything else I can do for you all?  Some little token of appreciation?  You did save my kingdom for me, and if fairy tales are anything to go by I’m supposed to offer you anything you ask for.  I don’t have any marriageable daughters, but I think one or two of the grandkids are still available.”

            “Oh, man, don’t tell my mother,” said Sam.

            “With your permission, your Majesty,” said Sir Stephen.  “If we can find the site of Rogsey Abbey, which I understand no longer exists, I would like to build a chapel there for my mother.  It was something I had hoped to do in my own time.”

            The Queen smiled.  “Show me the spot and I’ll build you a whole cathedral,” she promised.

            The sound of a barking dog made everybody look up, just in time to see a yellow retriever come bounding out of the same door the Queen had come through.  It ran down the steps, nearly falling over itself on the way, and bounded up to climb into Clint’s lap.  His coffee spilled, and Sam’s two swans ran away hoking in distress.

            “Lucky!” Clint exclaimed, ruffling the dog’s ears.  “How’d you get here?”  He turned to look towards the door, and there at the top of the steps were Laura Francis, and her two children.

            Clint pushed the dog off him and got up.  The two kids ran down the stairs, and he met them at the bottom, kneeling down on the pavement to hug them both.  Mrs. Francis joined them and, without standing up, Clint put an arm around her waist and kissed her pregnant belly.

            Nat grinned.  The Francis family would be living happily ever after, and she had a suspicion that Sharon and Sir Stephen would, too.  Sam would probably be able to find employment again soon as a surgeon, but he’d already been talking about going to work for a bird rescue instead.  A man with both medical knowledge and the ability to ask the birds where they hurt would be invaluable in such a place.

            That just left Natasha and Allen, and… well, _happily_ ever after had never been in the offering for somebody like her.  It would, however, be a less _lonely_ ever after, and she liked the idea of that.


End file.
